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Alex Wintz

Born in California and raised in New York and New Jersey, Alex Wintz began playing guitar at the age of four. Over the years he has had the opportunity to learn and play numerous genres of music including jazz, pop/rock, and electronic music. Alex enrolled at the Berklee College of Music on a full tuition scholarship in the fall of 2006. Over the years he has been mentored by some of the best music educators across the country including Vic Juris, Hal Crook, Dave Santoro, Rick Peckham, Dave Stryker, and Joe Lovano. Alex is continued his studies at the Juilliard School where he graduated from the Master's Jazz program under the tutelage of Rodney Jones, Frank Kimbrough, Kenny Washington, Ben Wolfe, Ron Blake, and Frank Kimbrough.

At a young age he has already had the opportunity to perform across the country and around the world, including Singapore, Switzerland, Canada and U.S. clubs including the Monterey Jazz Festival, The Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, NJPAC, The Knitting Factory, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, IAJE, Jazzschool, Smalls, Shanghai Jazz, DC Jazz Festival, and Ku'umbwa Arts Center.

Awards and recognition achieved include 2006 National Foundation of the Arts ARTS Award winner, 2006 Clifford Brown/Stan Getz Fellowship All Star,2006 Most Outstanding Jazz Soloist in High School Catagory in the Downbeat Music Awards, 2007 + 2008 Berklee Guitar Achievement Award, and 2008 Semi-Finalist in the Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition. Current regular groups and collaborators include the Alex Wintz Trio, Wayne Tucker Quartet, Etienne Charles and Kaiso, Ben Williams and Sound Effect, Alice Tan Ridley Band, and Nick Finzer Quintet.

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Album Review

Roxy Coss: Disparate Parts

Read "Disparate Parts" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Let's just get thing one out into the open right away: Disparate Parts has plenty of balls to spare. Saxophonist Roxy Coss' acute, teasingly biting tone and rich, no boundaries disposition to composing and jamming has placed her high in the generational echelon of new and challenging players. She willingly and unapologetically blends and blurs the lines to suit any and all missives, and the fourteen fireballs heard loud and clear on Disparate Parts broach nothing less. Commandeering ...

9
Album Review

Steven Feifke Big Band: Kinetic

Read "Kinetic" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Jazz connoisseurs who lean toward big bands that swing as earnestly and often as the renowned architects of the epic big-band era should find plenty to cheer about on Kinetic, the debut recording by New York-based pianist, composer and arranger Steven Feifke's audacious and fiery ensemble. This is a band that fires on all cylinders—but it couldn't even leave the garage unless Feifke supplied the fuel. With one exception (noted below), Feifke's intense and high-powered charts neatly pave the way, ...

1
Album Review

Steven Feifke Big Band: Kinetic

Read "Kinetic" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Assimilare la tradizione per poi creare cose originali. È questo il percorso che hanno seguito e continuano a seguire i musicisti jazz, in forme e approfondimenti diversi. A 30 anni esatti il pianista Steven Feifke è ancora al primo passo ma in questo scintillante debutto orchestrale dimostra di avere tutte le carte in regola per sviluppare percorsi originali. Kinetic è infatti un esempio del miglior modern mainstream orchestrale, elaborato sulle lezioni di Thad Jones e Mel Lewis, ...

10
Album Review

Alex Wintz Trio: Live To Tape

Read "Live To Tape" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Back in the day (the 1960s), when guitarist Grant Green stepped into the studio to record for Blue Note Records, they rolled the tape. Literally. Pushed a button and the spools began to spin, the left circle feeding the right. On Live To Tape, that is how guitarist Alex Wintz rolls, too, taking his modern sound back to bygone recording mode, catching his sounds directly to tape. All that, of course, don't mean a thing if it ain't ...

6
Album Review

Nick Finzer: Cast Of Characters

Read "Cast Of Characters" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann


Trombonist Nick Finzer's fifth album as a leader is a strong testament to his musical influences expressed by through-designed compositions and lively interplay. On Cast of Characters , the New York-based musician, composer and label owner has gathered all of his forces together to deliver a concentrated, conceptual exercise in arrangement and instrumentation, which lives off of the impeccable performances of the individual musicians as much as it does off of the compositional material at hand. Traditional swing-and ...

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Album Review

Nick Finzer: Cast Of Characters

Read "Cast Of Characters" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


A cryptic element lurks beneath trombonist Nick Finzer's Cast Of Characters. The theme of the album is artistic influences. But who are they... “We laugh, we cry, we celebrate, we learn, and we forge our own path on the shoulders of those who came before us. We are both the sum of our experience and the product of our influence. We are who we choose to embrace." This is from the spread out trifecta of liner notes in ...

7
Album Review

Alex Wintz: LifeCycle

Read "LifeCycle" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


Life cycles mark and determine how we develop, where we travel, and why we arrive and thrive in different places, figuratively and literally, at any given time. That's the point that guitarist Alex Wintz's music makes here, as this project takes its cues from the larger natural theme while growing specifically from his own personal and musical evolution of late. It's a work that couldn't be made at any other moment, as it specifically reflects Wintz as he is today, ...

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"Alex Wintz is an outstanding guitarist—definitely a new voice worth hearing." —ick Peckham, Assistant Chair of Guitar, Berklee College of Music

"Alex Wintz is one of the best young guitarists coming up on the scene today" —Dave Stryker

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Dreams, Visions,...

Outside in Music
2023

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Disparate Parts

Outside in Music
2022

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Kinetic

Outside in Music
2021

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Cast Of Characters

Outside in Music
2020

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Live To Tape

Outside in Music
2020

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Live To Tape

Outside in Music
2020

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We're More Than the Sum of Our Influences

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

The Guru

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

... the Alternative

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

You'll Never Know ...

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

Venus

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

The Weatherman

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

(Take the) Fork in the Road

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

A Duke

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

... Patience

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

Patience...

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

Brutus, the Contemporary

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

... Perspective

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

Evolution of ...

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

A Sorcerer (is a myth)

From: Cast Of Characters
By Alex Wintz

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