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Alex Pinto

He is striving to go deeper

About Me

Guitarist/composer Alex Pinto embodies jazz’s international reach, with a sinewy sound steeped in North Indian classical music, rock, and exploratory post-bop forms. His debut CD Inner State (Pursuane) announces the arrival of a musician brimming with stimulating ideas, an artist who also possesses an essential gift for bringing fellow players into his singular vision. Rather than flaunting his abundant technique, Pinto makes a powerful first impression with his fluid phrasing, bright tone, and a program of seven original compositions marked by engaging melodies and unorthodox harmonic forms. Pinto can claim both classical Indian music and Midwestern troubadours as his birthright, as his father hails from Mangalore in the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka and his mother descends from Wisconsin. While based in the suburbs of Washington, DC (Alex was born February 8, 1985, in Silver Spring, MD), the family spent years abroad due to his father’s work for the World Bank. Pinto was in the midst of a three-year stay in Warsaw when he started playing guitar around the age of five. Back in the States he continued to explore the guitar, and got turned onto jazz by his middle school band director, Frankie Ball, and by his guitar teachers, Fred Wilcheck (early years) and Donato Soviero (high school). His father’s posting to Moscow during Pinto’s junior high years didn’t interrupt his studies, as he enrolled at the demanding Gnesin Academy of Music. By the time the family moved to Bethesda, Maryland, Pinto was a passionate jazz player who earned a chair in several regional honor bands. Rather than apply to Berklee or Manhattan School of Music, Pinto decided to enroll in Montreal’s prestigious McGill University, which boasts a large music conservatory with a respected jazz studies program. It was a setting in which he thrived, and by his senior year Pinto was getting regular calls for gigs. His undergraduate years were also a time of personal ferment, as Pinto decided to delve into his Indian cultural roots. Frequent visits to his father’s family in Karnataka instilled a love and familiarity with the sounds, smells, and tastes of India, but like many college students he began to define himself once he left home. He reached a career epiphany while attending the Banff Creative Music Workshop, a creative hothouse run by trumpeter Dave Douglas in the Canadian Rockies, where he forged ties with heavyweight improvisers like guitarist Rez Abassi, drummer Gerald Cleaver, saxophonist Donny McCaslin, and Kneebody keyboardist Adam Benjamin. Realizing that a master’s degree could open up teaching opportunities, he got turned onto CalArts by Benjamin, a graduate of the program. Drawn particularly by the school’s strong Hindustani music program, Pinto studied with guitar expert Larry Koonse, bass legend Charlie Haden, multi-instrumental wizard Vinny Golia, and sarod master Aashish Khan. Pinto arrived in San Francisco in 2009 as part of the inaugural class of MusicianCorps Fellows for Music National Service, and spent a year serving as the music coordinator at Horace Mann Middle School. Now forging ties on the vibrant Bay Area jazz scene, Pinto gained some international attention when he placed third at the 2008 Gibson Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition. He also earned a finalist spot in the Yamaha Six String Theory Guitar Competition, an international talent search engineered by Lee Ritenour in 2010.

It’s a safe bet that he’ll be back in the spotlight with the release of Inner State, an album introducing a guitarist with a sound and concept unlike any other player on the scene. ▪