Results for "Paul Bollenback"

Paul Bollenback

Born: June 6, 1959

"Not one jazz virtuoso could put the definition of jazz into words, but all agreed that you know it when you hear it. That's the way it is with Paul Bollenback. It's bona-fide playing, unambiguous, up-front and powerful," summarizes George Benson, a long-time friend. His debut recording, Original Visions, as a leader with Challenge Records, is one of the most creative efforts by a guitarist in recent memory. Double Gemini, his second CD, features four of his own compositions and won the title of CD of The Month in Jim Fisch's distinguished jazz column in 20th Century Jazz Magazine. It won the same award from the renowned jazz radio station WBGO in Newark, New Jersey. Challenge Records has recently released his third recording, Soul Grooves.

Paul Bollenback's emotionally expressive style and eclectic approach is the result of years of listening, studying and playing music by Carlos Santana, Yes, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Kenny Burrell, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter and Lenny Breau. At the age of seven, Paul received a nylon-string guitar from his father, a classically trained trumpeter and lover of music. When Paul was eleven, his family relocated to new Delhi, India, on a three-year consulting engagement with United States Aid. It was there that he cultivated his life-long interest in exotic musical sounds and timbres, which is evident in Original Visions. When his family returned to the United States, Paul's father bought him an electric guitar and he began listening to rock-and-roll. Then he heard Miles Davis and his world changed forever.

Bollenback attended the University of Miami as a Music major, he later studied privately for eight years with Baltimore-based professor of Theory/Composition Asher Zlotnik. In 1993 while touring in Europe Paul was awarded a grant from the Virginia Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts to compose and perform "New Music for Three Jazz Guitars". In 1997, Bollenback was named Musician of the Year at the Washington Area Music Awards, and became an Adjunct Professor of Music at the American University in Washington, DC. His two compositions, "Wookies's Revenge" and "Romancin' the Moon" (featured on Joey DeFrancesco's Rebboppin') earned him the SESAC award for original songs and he was later invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Paul was featured at the 1998 World Internet Trade Show in Los Angeles, and his band opened the New York Guitar Show in May 1998 where he also performed with John Pisano.

Paul has appeared on the Tonight Show, Good Morning America, Joan Rivers, The Today Show, and Entertainment Tonight. He has contributed some acoustic guitar work to America's Most Wanted and has played with an impressive spectrum of musicians, including Stanley Turrentine, Gary Bartz, Joey DeFrancesco, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Joe Locke, Gary Thomas, Steve Wilson, Shunzo Ohno, James Moody, David “Fathead” Newman, Jack McDuff, Charlie Byrd, Paul Bley, Carol Sloane, Chris McNulty, Melissa Walker, Carter Jefferson, Dave Valentin, Herb Ellis, Jimmy Bruno, and East Meets Jazz(with Sandip Burman).

The Promise of You

By Marcus Goldhaber

Label: Fallen Apple Records
Released: 2026
Track listing: Skylark; Just One More Song; Let’s Get Lost; The Promise of You; Two at a Time; Uptown Cabaret; You Will Be Loved; I’ll See You In My Dreams; I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise; There’s a Small Hotel; You Are a Love Song; The Best Is Yet to Come

Reach for Tomorrow

By Anna Kolchina

Label: OA2 Records
Released: 2026
Track listing: Dancing in the Dark; You and the Night and the Music; Who Can I Turn To?; Invitation; All or Nothing at All; Right from the Start; What Now My Love?; Vacation from the Blues; Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams; So Many Stars; Whistling Away the Dark; Reach for Tomorrow

The Ecstasy of Love

By Michael Moody

Label: Self Produced
Released: 2026
Track listing: The Nearness of You; Embraceable You; Unforgettable; Easy to Love; Ghost of a Chance; I'm Lost; Body and Soul; Good Morning Heartache; Don't Explain; You've Changed; I'm Gonna Lock My Heart; Old Rugged Cross.

Oh No, I'm In Love Again

By Greg Farnese

Label: Imani / 88 Keys Productions
Released: 2026
Track listing: Oh No, I'm In Love Again ; Wonderwall ; You Made Me So Very Happy ; Dream ; Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You ; Wake Me Up When September Ends ; A Little Bit Of Love ; Everybody Wants To Rule The World ; Oh No, I'm in Love Again (reprise).

A Blue Time

By Joe Syrian

Label: Circle 9 Records
Released: 2026
Track listing: Jordu; Agua De Beber; Teach Me Tonight; Norwegian Wood; Black Magic Woman; Charade; Blue Bossa; Nature Boy; Sway; A Blue Time.

Another Kind of Bird

By Richard Baratta

Label: Savant Records
Released: 2026
Track listing: Donna Lee; Anthropology; Little Suede Shoes; Ah-Leu-Cha; Embraceable You; Now’s the Time; Moose the Mooche; Yardbird Suite; Segment; Au Privave.

Richard Baratta: Another Kind of Bird

by Pierre Giroux
June 22, 2026

Charlie Parker's music has withstood every conceivable tribute. It has been copied, analyzed, celebrated, and occasionally embalmed by its own importance. Imagine the surprise at the release of drummer-percussionist Richard Baratta's Another Kind of Bird, which is not another museum-piece salute to Bird. Baratta and pianist-arranger Bill O'Connell treat Parker's compositions as living, breathing works capable ...

Richard Baratta: Another Kind of Bird

by Jack Bowers
June 14, 2026

Even today, more than seventy years after his death at the young age of thirty-four, the legendary alto saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird" Parker remains incomparable, as a player and composer who almost singlehandedly changed the vocabulary of jazz, introducing revisions and concepts that have never worn thin or gone out of style. Simply put, no one had ...

Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time

by Jack Bowers
June 10, 2026

Drummer Joe Syrian's spit-shined Motor City Jazz Octet keeps driving emphatically forward on its second recording, A Blue Time, using an impressive arsenal to scurry through a generally agreeable lineup of more or less familiar themes that have been given fresh coats of paint by seven astute and talented arrangers. Even with the various ...