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Greg Chako Trio: Life After 40
by Edward Blanco
Cincinnati-born jazz guitarist and international recording artist Greg Chako wears many hats including composer, arranger, educator and band leader. Chako has forged an extraordinary career spanning over thirty-five years in which he has recorded sixteen albums. Life After 40 is a follow-up to previous studio recordings Friends, Old & New (Mint 400 Records 2022) and A Place for Bass-Chamber Jazz Duets (Mint 400 Records 2022) marking a new chapter in his life, recording in the US after his return from ...
read moreGreg Chako: Friends, Old & New
by Edward Blanco
Guitarist Greg Chako has always considered himself a composer and arranger first and foremost over his abilities as a player. After a long chapter in his life where he performed and produced music in Asia, his return to the states and coming back home to Cincinnati, has energized the guitarist and filled him with a new sense of purpose, resuming his prolific music career by signing with a new label (Mint 400 Records), re-releasing previously produced recordings and finally presenting ...
read moreGreg Chako: Sudden Impact
by Edward Blanco
Cincinnati-based guitarist Greg Chako spent many years in Asia, living and performing in various countries including Japan, China and Singapore. He produced several albums during his time abroad, assembling a discography that has not been readily available to American jazz fans. Sudden Impact, originally released in 1996, is the first of several re-releases on the Mint 400 Records label designed to expose Chako's music to a wider audience. Staying within the straight-ahead tradition, the album presents seven re-imagined versions of ...
read moreGreg Chako: Everybody's Got A Name
by Michael P. Gladstone
Guitarist/composer/bandleader Greg Chako has recorded in varied venues and formatsperforming in duet, trio and here in quartet. Paint A Picture, Tell A Story (CPB, 2007) even made use of marquee names Don Byron and Delfeayo Marsalis. It remains a mystery why he hasn't achieved wider acclaim and better gigs. Perhaps the use of a creative album cover could make a difference.Chako and the members of his quartet make use of classic jazz album covers in which the fonts, ...
read moreEverybody's Got A Name
by Edward Blanco
Greg Chako Everybody's Got A Name Self Published 2008
Guitarist and composer Greg Chako is the consummate musician who, despite personal hardships in his life, dedicates himself to the art of jazz with every fiber of his being, producing one fine album after another. Everybody's Got a Name is his ninth album overall, and fourth in a little over a two-year period. The music contained in his previous releases explored the expressive ...
read moreGreg Chako: Paint A Picture, Tell A Story
by Michael P. Gladstone
Perhaps reviewing guitarist Greg Chako's Where We Find Ourselves (CPB, 2006) and Two's Company, Three's A Crowd Jazz Duets (CPB, 2006), explains why his adventures, both musical and otherwise, remain amazing.
From Boston's Berklee College of Music, Chako relocated to New York, where he discovered his talent for culinary arts. In Amherst, Massachusetts, working as a chef, Chako found that he had talent as a jazz promoter of concerts and festivals, which also gave him access ...
read moreTake Five With Greg Chako
by AAJ Staff
Meet Greg Chako: USA born, Greg distinguished himself early on as an exceptional guitarist by placing second in the American Guild of Music Competition at age 11. After receiving formal education at Berklee Collage of Music in Boston, he began performing and promoting jazz, including appearances with leading artists. He has overcome many obstacles in life, like a physical disability of the wrist called carpal-tunnel syndrome, divorce, and the sudden death of his second wife due to breast ...
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