Jack DeSalvo

JACK DeSALVO, born in New York City, developed his extraordinary guitar style from a deep immersion into modern jazz, classical guitar and his own  prolific compositional output. He has been compared to artists as diverse as  Ralph Towner and John McLaughlin and has studied guitar with Bill Connors and Leonid Bolotine, composition with Ariada Mikéshina (herself a student of  Richard Strauss) and at Berklee College of Music as well as with composer  and theorist George Russell. DeSalvo performs mainly with his own trio and  quartet and the group Quintrepid, which includes Jack on guitar, Matt Lambiase on flugelhorn, Chris Forbes on piano, double-bassist Dmitry Ishenko and drummer Tom Cabrera. All About Jazz calls Quintrepid “ a swinging collective with a fresh sound”.

His duet album Lumens with German/Swiss saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen  received praise on both sides of the Atlantic, “I have been completely bowled over by this album since it arrived for review a few weeks ago.” – Nick Lea, Jazz Views, “Nicole Johänntgen and Jack DeSalvo pulled out all the stops at the recording session for “Lumens”. Guitar and saxophone play almost hands-free with the themes and find the perfect balance in terms of sound.” – Georg Wassmuth, SWR2, “(DeSalvo’s) conception is pure jazz, comping, accenting and prodding Johänntgen’s watery lines on alto and soprano.” – Downbeat

Hailed in THE WIRE magazine as “masterful”, Jack DeSalvo has performed on over 100 albums with over 30 under his name. He is featured on numerous classic jazz albums, including Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Red Warrior, Spontaneous Combustion by the group D3, Transparencies with Karl Berger, and Anthony Cox, and Liquide Stones in duo with Arthur Lipner. He has performed worldwide, including at jazz festivals and clubs in Europe. “When you listen to Jack DeSalvo, it’s immediately apparent that he has an
enormous musical vocabulary. Renaissance classical, garage rock, straightahead jazz, downtown skronk and traditional mandolin melodies are all part of his musical DNA. But when you hear DeSalvo improvise on classical guitar, you’re hearing the music of that precise moment. He has many influences (and thereare as many poets, philosophers, and thinkers as there
are musicians)…”

 – Mitch Goldman, WKCR Jack DeSalvo is a founder of, and producer for Unseen Rain Records and also a multi-instrumentalist playing (besides classical, steel-string, 12-string and electric guitars) cello, mandolin, banjo, keyboards, etc.