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Tom Guarna

Grammy-nominated guitarist, composer and arranger Tom Guarna began his musical studies at age fifteen, rapidly demonstrating a natural ability to play and compose. After studying classical guitar and composition at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in 1986, he played local gigs in New York and fine-tuned his education with John Abercrombie. He earned a Bachelor Degree from The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in 2008, and a Master’s Degree at The Juilliard School in 2010.

After working with several jazz bands, he joined Blood Sweat and Tears in 1995 and toured extensively with them for the next three years. Since then, he has forged his own voice as a modern jazz guitarist, performing with a wide range of artists including Wallace Roney, Stanley Clarke, Mark Turner, Branford Marsalis, Randy Brecker, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Mulgrew Miller, Fred Wesley, Mike Clark, Uri Caine, The Allman Brothers, The Yellowjackets, and Gary Bartz.

Guarna has toured five continents with his own quartets and as a top sideman in several exciting groups led by Lenny White, E.J. Strickland, and Les McCann. He was a featured artist on over thirty albums, and composed “If You Dare,” a funk-rock song on Lenny White's 2010 Anomaly CD. Guarna also toured the United States with pianist Manuel Valera, after playing on the Grammy Award-nominated 2012 album, New Cuban Express.

As composer and leader, Guarna has recorded: Get Together (2005), Out from the Underground (2007), Wingspan (2008), Major Minor (2009), Bittersweet (2011), and the hard-grooving Rush (2014), which garnered wide acclaim. His seventh album, The Wishing Stones (2017), featuring an all-star quartet of drummer Brian Blade, bassist John Patitucci and pianist Jon Cowherd, was lauded a 4-star rating in DownBeat Magazine.

Tom Guarna, a guitarist whom DownBeat magazine has praised for the “emotion, tension, surprise and passion” in his playing on Rush, assembled what he calls “a dream team” for The Wishing Stones. The album, his first for the Destiny Records label, was released in November of 2017. The 11 hook-laced Guarna originals, produced by the guitarist and performed with warmth and élan by his all-star quartet, were masterfully engineered by George Shalda. It was recorded at Sear Sound, the New York site of historic studio sessions for artists such as David Bowie and Wynton Marsalis.

The Wishing Stones was inspired by his accidental discovery of Aruba's Rock Wish Garden, a peaceful beach featuring stone structures that visitors have built over the years as totems. Guarna explains: “Each of these stacks of stones has a story, representing the desires, aspirations and memories of many people. I’d like my songs - my stacks of stones, as it were – to have a similar resonance with listeners. That’s been a goal as I evolve, to convey life's emotions in music, whether it’s in my writing or the textures I create on the guitar. I want to get to the heart of the matter.”

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Live Review

Tom Guarna And The Ted Ludwig Trio At Jazz At The Joint

Read "Tom Guarna And The Ted Ludwig Trio At Jazz At The Joint" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Tom Guarna The Joint Little Rock, AR March 7, 2021 One of the curious results of 2005's Hurricane Katrina was its diasporic sequelae. Every order of New Orleans inhabitants interpreted the thrown bones of that event and elected to leave for safer climes. One of the greatest beneficiaries of this migration was Arkansas, which assimilated many NOLA expatriates into her own rich tapestry. One such ex-pat was guitarist and composer Ted Ludwig, who, with ...

5
Album Review

Tom Guarna: Spirit Science

Read "Spirit Science" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Guitarist / composer Tom Guarna uses geometric concepts and patterns as a starting point on Spirit Science, his eighth album as leader, pairing its mathematical precision with spiritual awareness to more faithfully represent his musical point of view. Be that as it may, Guarna's handiwork must of course be appraised for its perception and effect on the listener, not for any tenets on which it is based. In other words, when all the premises have been explored, what ...

10
Album Review

Tom Guarna: Spirit Science

Read "Spirit Science" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann


With The Wishing Stones (Destiny Records, 2017) New York-based guitarist Tom Guarna released something of a breakthrough album, featuring a prominently cast quartet made up of Brian Blade on drums, John Patitucci on bass and pianist Jon Cowherd. With that album Guarna perfected his personal style of composition, which sees post-bop language taken to more extensive structures filtered through modern sonic production values. Spirit Science picks up where that album left off and delivers another engaging set of modern post-bop ...

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Album Review

Tom Guarna: The Wishing Stones

Read "The Wishing Stones" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann


After having established himself amongst the leading modern Jazz-guitar voices with remarkably ambitious 2014 release Rush , Brooklyn-Born Tom Guarna returns leading an all-star quartet comprised of drummer Brian Blade, bassist John Patitucci and pianist John Cowherd on the inspired The Wishing Stones, sonically carrying forth what had defined the last record. While Rush saw Guarna leaving a comfort-zone which characterized previous releases, The Wishing Stones finds the guitarist building upon the modern guitar sounds and compositional structures, further developing ...

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Album Review

Tom Guarna: The Wishing Stones

Read "The Wishing Stones" reviewed by John Kelman


An unfortunate reality for too many musicians--even those who are well-known--is that most of their audiences are aware of but a portion of their true work...their fullest capabilities. Recordings only tell part of the story, since artists often tour with groups that are never documented. And even those tours, for those fortunate enough to experience them, are often limited-run engagements--perhaps a few weeks in Europe here, a short tour of Japan there. Even in North America, given the vast distances ...

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Album Review

Letizia Gambi: Blue Monday

Read "Blue Monday" reviewed by James Nadal


As the world continues to shrink--musically speaking of course--the melding of American jazz with Mediterranean melody is another spin cycle that makes appreciation of this evolving art form so interesting. With high expectations, Neapolitan vocalist Letizia Gambi, which hails from a theatrical family, and has extensive jazz education, releases Blue Monday, an exuberant and ambitious production that takes jazz on a romantic Italian holiday. After a collaboration with drummer extraordinaire Lenny White in 2009 led to “Introducing Letizia ...

1
Album Review

Tom Guarna: Rush

Read "Rush" reviewed by Luigi Sforza


Il chitarrista, compositore e band leader newyorkese Tom Guarna è un musicista che pur muovendosi in un ambito mainstream garantisce alla sua musica tratti di assoluta riconoscibilità. Il timbro del suo strumento elettrico è tarato su frequenze jazz-rock e post-fusion, anche se l'elemento dominante risulta essere una sintassi espressiva di stampo post boppistico. Un brano come “Movement and Repose" -ad esempio--nonostante la ricchezza delle accentuazioni rielabora una serie di concetti che rimandano al virtuosismo di Allan Holdsworth.

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Website

All About Jazz Top 10 Tracks: November 2020

All About Jazz Top 10 Tracks: November 2020

Source: All About Jazz

All About Jazz features a free song every day spanning all genres of jazz, and of the 30 tracks featured in November, these ten represent our personal favorites. We also included the top ten reader favorites as indicated by total listens. Musicians and record labels can submit full length MP3s for consideration here. Enjoy! The Trion Re Tom Guarna From: Spirit Science 6:53 A Night in Tunisia Josie Falbo From: ...

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Recording

Jazz Guitarist Tom Guarna Leads a Dream-Team Quartet–Featuring Keyboardist Jon Cowherd, Bassist John Patitucci and Drummer Brian Blade–on "The Wishing Stones"

Jazz Guitarist Tom Guarna Leads a Dream-Team Quartet–Featuring Keyboardist Jon Cowherd, Bassist John Patitucci and Drummer Brian Blade–on "The Wishing Stones"

Source: Two for the Show Media

Tom Guarna—a guitarist whom DownBeat magazine has praised for the “emotion, tension, surprise and passion” in his music—assembled what he calls “a dream team” for The Wishing Stones, his seventh album as a leader, and his first for Destiny Records. The album, to be released on November 10, 2017, features Guarna leading a quartet with keyboardist Jon Cowherd, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade, each player a renowned virtuoso and band leader in his own right. Guarna’s previous album, ...

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Contest

Enter the "Tom Guarna - Rush" Giveaway at All About Jazz!

Enter the "Tom Guarna - Rush" Giveaway at All About Jazz!

Source: All About Jazz

All About Jazz members are invited to enter the Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records “Tom Guarna - Rush“ giveaway contest starting today. We'll select FIVE winners at the conclusion of the contest on March 15th. Click here to enter the contest (Becoming a fan of Tom Guarna at AAJ automatically enters you in the contest.) Good luck! Your Friends at Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records About Rush Brooklyn born and raised guitarist/composer Tom Guarna is a musician's musician, a stellar ...

Recording

Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records Proudly Releases Rush From Guitarist/Composer Tom Guarna

Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records Proudly Releases Rush From Guitarist/Composer Tom Guarna

Source: Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity

To be released worldwide on February 25, 2014, Rush is Guarna's sixth album as a leader, and the first featuring his remarkable new quartet CD Release Celebration - February 23 @ The 55 Bar Featuring: Jon Cowherd-piano, E.J. Strickland-drums, Orlando le Fleming-bass, TBA - saxophones “This is perhaps Tom's best recording to date! The level of playing and compositions are astounding" —Vic Juris “ As I listen to Tom's music , the first 2 things that come to mind are, ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Spirit Science

Destiny Records
2020

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The Wishing Stones

Destiny Records
2017

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Blue Monday

RP Production
2016

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Rush

Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records
2015

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Tom Guarna: Rush

Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records
2014

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You Took Me

Polisonic
2007

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The Trion Re

From: Spirit Science
By Tom Guarna

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