Jazz Guitarist NICK RUSSO Honors RO at Jalopy Theatre in NYC on 10/29

October 1, 2017 by 1888media

Armed with an impressive debut recording, broad in scope, deep in concept and eminently listenable,” guitarist/banjoist Nick Russo burst onto the scene eleven years ago with rave reviews from All About Jazz, DownBeat, Jazz Times, Jazziz, EJazz News, and Hot House. 

For his debut “Ro,” a cross-culturally groundbreaking foray into modernism, Russo assembled an ensemble of eleven skilled musicians to accompany his symbiotic excursion as they fluidly ran the gamut from straight-ahead to avant-garde and North Indian classical. Ro‘s ocean’s eleven were Mark Turner (tenor saxophone), Bryan Murray (tenor saxophone), Greg Glassman (trumpet), Art Hirahara (piano/Fender Rhodes), Pandit Samir Chatterjee (tabla), Nathan Peck (bass), Matt Clohesy (bass), Willard Dyson (drums), Ari Hoenig (drums), David Pleasant (drums/percussion) and vocalist Miles Griffith.

 

With this year marking the 11th anniversary of “Ro featuring Nick Russo +11,” the Jalopy Theatre & School of Music in Brooklyn, NY, is providing a fertile atmosphere for a special evening of aural transformation. Playing the album in its entirety, several of the original musicians will join Russo, including Hoenig, Griffith, Glassman, Peck, and Chatterjee. Special guest Dan Aran, on drums, is confirmed to join the journey with more to be announced in the coming weeks.

Opening the show is New York City’s Banjo Nickaru & Western Scooches, perhaps the only band fusing world music with folk, country, roots, music of New Orleans, 1920s, and calypso. Band members, which include Betina Hershey (voice/guitar), Nick Russo (banjo/guitar/voice) and Emiliano Valerio (cajon/percussion) with special guests: Rob Hecht (fiddle), Miles Griffith (vocals) and Rob Adkins (bass).

Anointed “Americana music at its purest and most impressive” by No Depression, the members of Banjo Nickaru & Western Scooches have worked with the likes of Paul McCartney, Julia Roberts, Sam Mendes, Paul Simon, Wynton Marsalis, Jimmy McGriff, Teddy Charles, and Sonny Dallas and have performed on ABC’s Good Morning America, WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour, Blue Plate Special, Extended Play Sessions (The Alternate Root), Live at Relix, and WFUV’s Sunday Supper and appeared in movies such as Mona Lisa Smile, Away We Go, Disney’s Enchanted and the PBS Masterpiece, The Chaperone.

Praise for Ro:

 

“Keep and eye out and an ear open for Nick Russo. He is a guitarist with original ideas, which comes as a rarity these days.” All About Jazz

“A fluid straight ahead player with a globalist outlook, Nick Russo cultivates a wonderfully pure jazz tone on his self-released album Ro.” Jazz Times

“Russo’s tone is very near perfect – big and bold, but still subtle, very full in the line of players like Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell, and Tal Farlow.” Vintage Guitar

 

“Russo gets most inventive when building from disparate materials, especially on “Little Hands,” whose Indian flavor proves hospitable to Russo’s banjo, and “Please Come Home.” DownBeat

“Russo has a perfect sense of both harmonic and melodic artistry… [he] deals in a realm of strikingly beautiful sonorities and dazzling color as well as glittering shade and delicate tones. Unique… Singular… Compelling…” EJazz News