Grant Geissman
Guitarist/composer Grant Geissman is a popular Contemporary Jazz recording artist, with sixteen albums released under his own name. Grant’s latest project, BLOOZ, marks a return to a partnership with the Mesa/Bluemoon label, which released a number of Grant’s albums in the early 1990s.
Other recent albums include BOP! BANG! BOOM!, which completes a trilogy of jazz albums released on Grant’s own label, Futurism Records. BOP! BANG! BOOM! is a powerfully eclectic recording that features special guests including Tom Scott, Larry Carlton, Albert Lee, Russell Ferrante, Mike Finnegan, Leland Sklar and Van Dyke Parks.
The second in the trilogy, Cool Man Cool, features “cool music I like to play, cool people I like to play with,” including special guests Chick Corea, Chuck Mangione, Tom Scott, Jerry Hahn, Russell Ferrante, Patrice Rushen, Mike Finnigan, and Van Dyke Parks. His previous project, Say That!, marked his return to “real” (not Smooth) jazz, and contains thirteen original Grant Geissman compositions that play like a righteous melding of 1960s Wes Montgomery, Horace Silver, and Jimmy Smith. Jazz critic Bill Milkowski wrote that “Say That! is an iron fist upside the mushy head of smooth jazz, and Grant Geissman's defiant declaration of independence.”
Geissman also co-wrote the music for all twelve seasons of the hit CBS-TV series Two and a Half Men, for all six seasons of hit CBS-TV series Mike & Molly, and for the first season of the short-lived CBS-TV series B Positive. He has also contributed specialty music for a number of other TV shows, including The Big Bang Theory and Mom.
As a studio guitarist he has recorded with such artists as Quincy Jones, Steve Tyrell, Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, Chuck Mangione (playing the now-legendary guitar solo on Chuck's 1978 hit “Feels So Good”), Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson, Inara George, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band, Paula Abdul, Ringo Starr, Keiko Matsui, David Benoit, Placido Domingo, Luis Miguel, and Julio Iglesias. He has also played on the scores for such TV shows as Monk (playing the Django Reinhardt-style acoustic guitar solo on the theme), Mad Men, and Dawson's Creek. He has played on the scores to films like Because I Said So (starring Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore), Minions, Austin Powers/The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Majestic, and Anaconda.
With the legendary, eclectic musician/composer Van Dyke Parks, Geissman has worked on Parks’s solo recording projects, and on music for the HBO children's program Harold and the Purple Crayon, for which Parks and Geissman were nominated for an Annie Award.
Read moreTags
Album Review
- Say That! by Jim Santella
- Say That! by John Kelman
- Cool Man Cool by John Kelman
- Cool Man Cool by Woodrow Wilkins
- Bop! Bang! Boom! by Bruce Lindsay
Radio & Podcasts
Read more articlesDecember 13, 2013
Grant Geissman's New Book Feldstein: The Mad Life And Fantastic Art Of...
July 12, 2012
Guitarist Grant Geissman's "Bop! Bang! Boom!" - July 17 Release On...