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Area native returns to Pittsburgh in support of latest album

5 min read
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Andy Bianco studied jazz guitar with Pittsburgh legend Joe Negri prior to attending the prestigious Berklee School of Music.

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The cover of Andy Bianco’s latest release

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Andy Bianco stands in the vicinity of one of New York City’s most-recognized landmarks.

“NYC Stories” finally are ready to be told.

The latest album by jazz guitarist Andy Bianco came out in February 2020 as he was wrapping up a tour backing Grammy-winning singer Elle Varner and ready to hit the road with his own band.

“Long story short, all of my plans for the CD release got canceled,” the 1998 Mt. Lebanon High School graduate recalled, including shows in Pittsburgh and – of course, given the album’s title – New York City.

Now, he’s preparing to promote “NYC Stories” with a summer tour that includes both those cities, plus stops in Philadelphia and Youngstown, Ohio.

The Andy Bianco Quartet actually is playing three shows in Pittsburgh, featuring Don Aliquo Jr. on saxophone. An Aug. 26 performance at Kingfly Spirits, 2613 Smallman St., is followed by appearances at both locations of the restaurant and jazz bar Con Alma, Aug. 27 at 5884 Ellsworth Ave. and the next night at the recently opened Downtown venue, 613 Penn Ave.

For Bianco, the Con Alma shows mark a reunion of sorts with the restaurants’ music curator, John Shannon. They participated together in the Mellon Jazz Festival Student All-Star Big Band in 1997 and then both studied at Berklee College of Music, where Bianco earned his degree in musical performance.

He later settled in New York, establishing himself as a particularly skillful guitarist and composer, with “NYC Stories,” his third album, consisting entirely of original content.

“In a basic sort of sense, it’s a documentation of my working ensembles in and around New York City over the past several years,” he said. “The group of people on the album is also sort of a collective of people who not only have played in my groups, but I’ve also played in their projects.”

Among the musicians joining him on the album is another Grammy winner, Wayne Escoffery, who shares tenor sax duties with Glenn White. Others include George Burton on piano and Paul Wells, Allan Mednard and Wayne Smith Jr. on drums.

Rounding out the recording is double bass player Nathan Peck, who is well-known on the Pittsburgh area music scene for his work with members of his family, including his parents, Skip and Donna, and brother Alexander.

Much of the all-instrumental “NYC Stories” material is based on Bianco’s observations around the Big Apple. For example, he was inspired to write the musical themes for “The Pigeon Whisperer” by a character who hung out in his home neighborhood.

“He had this big toy Camaro he would put on the ground, and then he would fill it with birdseed and he’d get all these pigeons to come around,” Bianco said. “I thought, who is this quirky guy? This is pretty darn cool.”

On a deeper level, the album has an overarching theme that, despite it being recorded prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, certainly resonates with what has transpired during the past year and a half.

“It’s about striving over whatever demons you encounter in your life,” he said, “and the message is to keep striving in spite of the adversity.”

The opening track, in fact, is named “For Those Who Battle Demons.” Featuring Escoffery and a drum solo by Mednard, the song has three distinct sections, including a tumultuous “battle” in the middle.

For the overall composition, Bianco acknowledged a couple of disparate influences: French composer Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (1908-92) and the Swedish “math rock” band Meshuggah, specializing in complex, atypical rhythmic structures.

Along those lines is Bianco’s “Bottom Dollar,” which features time signatures of 11/8, 12/8, 11/8 again and, to conclude, 13/8.

“I do some work with options and derivatives trading, and that’s actually kind of inspired by the motion of ‘candlestick’ chart patterns,” he said about the indicator of price movements, “when you’re looking at certain stocks and how they function.”

The label for “NYC Stories” is Next Level Records, which is part of New York-based arts media company Outside In Music.

“It is a great organization of mostly independent jazz artists, bandleaders and producers,” Bianco said. “They offer a lot of services to up-and-coming independent artists, in terms of promotion.”

Doing his part for up-and-coming artists, he established the Phillip Bianco Memorial Music Scholarship in memory of his father, a 37-year Mt. Lebanon High School teacher who founded the school’s jazz ensemble in the early 1970s. He also toured the country as a professional saxophonist and clarinetist.

The first scholarship was awarded in 2019 to Alexis Schulte-Albert, a double bass player attending the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University after graduating from Mt. Lebanon.

For the past two years, no awards have been given because of the pandemic. But Keynotes of South Hills, the administering organization, has scheduled May 14 as the competition day for the Phillip Bianco scholarship and awards of its own.

“It’s kind of my way of giving back to the community,” Andy Bianco said. “I intend to deepen my involvement in that arts advocacy and arts funding space as much as I can, the more I learn about it and the more I go along this path.”

For more information, visit artistecard.com/andybianco.

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