Guitarist John Carlini is named by Frets Magazine as a
founding member of the revolutionary West Coast new acoustic music
movement of the 1970's. John was the lead guitarist in the ground-breaking
new acoustic music group, the Great American Music Band. Ten years
earlier, after discovering the Wheeling, West Virginia, Jamboree on the
radio, John, the son of a New York Philharmonic violinist, made the New
York City folk music scene while still a teenager. Sitting in for Jim
Rooney with Bill Keith's band, he met David Grisman. In the next two
decades this fortuitous union would change the world's perception of what
acoustic string music could be.
A graduate of both Boston's Berklee School of Music as an arranging and
composition major, and the Navy School of Music, where he played big-band
rhythm guitar in the Show Band, Carlini became the musical director of the
newly formed David Grisman Quintet. The band's distinctive sound emanated
in part from his sophisticated, jazz-influenced arrangements.
Carlini's arrangements are featured on David Grisman's Dawg Jazz
(1982), and his orchestrations include work with the Turtle Island String
Quartet and the Kronos Quartet. Carlini orchestrated David Grisman's score
for the Federico DeLaurentis film King of the Gypsies. John is the
guitarist on Grisman's Gammy-nominated Dawg '90 and he performed
with Grisman and Stephane Grepelli at Carnegie Hall. In 1992, Carlini was
a New York Drama Desk award nominee for his orchestrations in the hit
off-Broadway musical Song of Singapore, also released on CD.
Carlini is currently developing his new acoustic music with two bands -
The John Carlini Jazz Ensemble, showcasing jazz-oriented aspects of the
music, and Over the Edge, defining a harmonically advanced bluegrass-based
music. Carlini's masterful musicianship is widely acknowledged. Guitar
Player magazine calls him "a wily mainstream jazz veteran with an
unerring feel for all idioms."
