Gambale & Colonna

Gambale & Colonna - Imagery Suite - 2000 - Wombat

Fusion star guitarist Frank Gambale and Italian classical guitarist Maurizio Colonna team up for some beautiful mostly acoustic playing on this duo effort. The two complement each other very well with Gambale handling the bulk of the soloing in his inimitable fashion; Gambale's sweep picking is unimpeded by the acoustic and his playing takes on an earthy, Mediterranean quality here. Colonna is sympathetic throughout and an able interlocutor for Gambale. Recommended. © Dave Dorkin / Fuse Magazine

"Imagery Suite" was recorded live at Spav Studios, Rome in 1999. Frank Gambale, the great jazz rock/fusion guitarist, and the brilliant modern classical guitarist Maurizio Colonna together prove that the "fusion" of different musical genres can work when it is handled properly. "Imagery Suite" is a wonderful guitar duet CD and HR by A.O.O.F.C. See if you can find Maurizio Colonna's "Rock Waves" album in which he covers many rock and pop classics including "Stairway To Heaven", "Englishman In New York", "Smoke on the Water" and more. Frank Gambale's "Absolutely Live: in Poland" album @ FRAGAMB/ABLIVPOL Buy Frank's "Coming To Your Senses" album [All tracks @ 320 Kbps: File size = 105 Mb]

STEELY DAN TRIVIA: Frank Gambale played electric guitar on The Dan's "FM" song. Ann Wickstrom of vintageguitar.com has said that Frank is "a Steely Dan freak! He can sit down at the piano and sing all the lyrics to almost every Steely Dan song!"

 TRACKS

1 El Prado 4:06
2 Villa Borghese 4:38
3 Maracana 5:16
4 Pacific Palisades 5:00
5 Beachwood Breeze 4:19
6 Camaiore 3:26
7 Fortaleza 5:25
8 L.A.X. 4:00
9 Shake A Tower 2:15
10 The Long and Short Of It 2:09
11 Aria Mediterranea No. 5 2:10
12 Incantation 3:46

All tracks composed by Frank Gambale & Maurizio Colonna except Tracks 9 & 10 by Frank Gambale, and Tracks 11 & 12 by Maurizio Colonna

MUSICIANS

Frank Gambale - Acoustic & Electric Guitar
Maurizio Colonna - Classical Guitar

FRANK GAMBALE BIO

Frank began playing guitar at age 7 in Canberra, Australia where he was born and raised. He was influenced by the blues playing of Jimi Hendrix , John Mayall / Eric Clapton, and Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and the music of the Beatles just to name a few. In his mid-teens he discovered Steely Dan, The Brecker Brothers and Chick Corea, which pointed him in a jazzy direction. When he was 15 years old in 1974, influenced and inspired by the improvisations of Chick Corea and Michael Brecker, began developing his Sweep Picking Technique which today is considered a standard technique which didn't exist, or was thought to be an impossible pursuit before Gambale proved otherwise. The Sweep Picking Technique is a landmark in the history of guitar and Frank Gambale is the undisputed Master of Sweep Picking. In 1982 at 23 he decided to leave his home to study at the Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) in Hollywood. He graduated with the highest honor, Student of the Year and was offered a teaching position which he kept for 4 years. During his year as a student, he was constantly bombarded with questions and curiosities from other students marvelling at how he was playing the guitar because no-one had ever seen the guitar played this way. His Sweep Picking Technique was already developed to a very high level and as a result of the constant question by fellow students and instructors, he penned his first book called "Speed Picking" ( Hal Leonard Publ. ). Gambale wanted to call the book "Sweep Picking" but the publisher didn't know what it meant since there was no precedent, and they believed the guitar public wouldn't know what the book was about either. Everyone now knows the what Sweep Picking is thanks to Gambale and his pioneering achievement. In 1986 he signed a 3 album contract with a small label called Legato and began his recording career. The same year he was recruited by Jean-luc Ponty to tour in the summer. Shortly after that tour, he auditioned for Chick Corea and began a 6 year stint which culminated in 5 albums, a Grammy award and two Grammy Nominations. Chick helped expose Frank to the world, for which he is very grateful, "playing with Chick was like a dream come true" says Frank.The band reunited in 2002 for the album "To The Stars" and more world tours which continue to the present. Also in 1986 Ibanez guitars approached him to endorse their guitar which culminated in a 13 year relationship and spawned the Frank Gambale model guitar which was first on sale worldwide in 1987. They made 4 versions of the guitar, the FGM100, FGM200, FGM300 and FGM400. In 1987 Frank signed a 3-video deal with DCI / Warner Brothers/ now all under the Alfred Publishing banner, for instructional videos. His first video "Monster Licks and Speed Picking" cemented Gambale's claim as the Grand Master of Sweep Picking. Again, he fought and lost with the publisher to have the word "sweep" not "speed" in the title but the fact remains that the subject matter was Sweep Picking. Gambale had given to the world, in these two instructional publications, the very nuts and bolts of Sweep Picking and the majority of his work outlined the accepted method of the Sweep Picking technique. In 1988, Frank signed a major label deal with JVC. In 1990 he released "Thunder From Down Under" which sold well all over the world and at one point it was #1 on the Japanese Jazz charts along with all his three Legato releases in the top 10 at the same time.In the same year he produced a landmark album with Allan Holdsworth called Truth In Shredding featuring songs from The Brecker Brothers, Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter and one original composition.In 1992, Frank decided it was time to go out there on his own and has been touring with his group ever since. He has toured in many countries with his own band including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and the U.S. He has done countless seminars and master classes worldwide to countries as far away as South Africa and Uruguay since the late 80's demonstrating his phenomenal Sweep Picking Technique and unique brand of music. In 1996 Frank was offered a position of Head of the Guitar Department of a new musical school in the Los Angeles area called the L.A. Music Academy (LAMA). He wrote most of the core curriculum/ study program for this one year vocational school including Harmony and Theory, Improvisation, Technique and Composition courses. He has recently resigned from the school and is in talks with other schools to license his curriculum. In the late 90's Frank began his own record label called Wombat Records on which he re-released his early Legato catalog along with other releases including a double live CD called Resident Alien - Live Bootlegs, and a duet CD with Maurizio Colonna, the famous Italian Classical guitarist called Imagery Suite, a live album recorded in Poland in 1996 where Frank plays lives versions of music from the Passages and Thinking Out Loud period, an album by his long-time friend and bassist Tony Muschamp called More Bass Please. In 2000 Gambale recorded a wonderful guitar album called Coming To Your Senses, the first release on the new Steve Vai owned label, Favored Nations. In 2005 Gambale released another album called Raison D'Etre. This marked another groundbreaking invention on the guitar, his "Gambale Tuning".This tuning, really a re-stringing of the guitar enabled close-voicing chords previously only the domain of piano players. Sweep Picking and the Gambale Tuning method will go down as two major contributions in guitar history books. In 2007 Gambale released Natural High, an all acoustic album featuring reworkings of jazz standards with his own melodies. In the same year he release three compilations of his music spanning his entire recording history, Best Of Jazz and Rock Fusion, Best Of The Smoothe Side, and Best Of The Acoustic Side. Frank has also played and contributed songs to seven Vital Information albums and three trio recordings on Mike Varney's Tone Center records. The first released in 1999 called Show Me What You Can Do was well received, and the second called The Light Beyond came out in July 2000 and the third one is simply called GHS 3. Frank left Ibanez for a deal with Yamaha guitars and a new Frank Gambale model called AES-FG soon followed. A second model is being designed currently for a future release. Frank worked with Carvin to design a guitar preamp called the Tone Navigator which was released at the January 2004 NAMM in Los Angeles. This is an opportunity granted to very few people. Gambale's most recent releases for Alfred Publishing are a concert DVD called Concert With Class, 90 min. concert and 90 min. instructional material related to the performance part and an acoustic concert/ instructional called Acoustic Improvisation which is a 60 minute concert with his Natural High Trio plus 60 minutes of melodic development ideas. Late in 2002 the celebration of Chick Corea's 60th birthday reunited the Elektric Band after a 10 year hiatus with a sold-out performance to 18,000 at the Hollywood Bowl Aug 28th. The band received a GRAMMY Award and two NOMINATIONS in the late 80's and early 90s. The show kicked off a wave of reunion tours. The group recorded an album the same year called To The Stars and a live DVD at the famous Montreux Jazz Festival. Gambale keeps a busy schedule for sure either writing for an album, book or video, touring or helping design a new guitar model with Yamaha, or giving seminars in Asia, or doing a session for an Italian pop record. Frank loves his work to say the least." I can't believe I get paid to do what I do, I wouldn't trade it for the world". © HDtracks 2007 - 2012 https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=artistdetail&id=4729

FRANK GAMBALE BIO (WIKI)

Frank Gambale (born 22 December 1958), is an Australian jazz fusion guitarist. He has released eleven studio albums over a period of more than two decades, and is renowned for his use of the sweep picking and economy picking techniques. Gambale graduated from GIT in Hollywood, with Student of the Year honors. He also taught there from 1984 to 1986. After graduation, he played the jazz club circuit with his own band and in 1985 released his first studio album, Brave New Guitar, through Legato Records (owned by Mark Varney, brother of Shrapnel Records founder Mike Varney) in what was to be a three-album contract. In that same year, he toured with Jean-Luc Ponty and shortly afterwards began a six-year stint with the Chick Corea Elektric Band in 1987. During his time with the latter, he has participated in five albums and shared a Grammy Award (with two nominations). In the 1980s, he released two studio albums and a live album. In 1988, he released Monster Licks & Speed Picking, the first of many instructional videos. An endorsement deal with Ibanez guitars resulted in the 1987 debut of the Frank Gambale Model (FGM) signature series, modeled after the Ibanez Saber. Yamaha also manufactured a signature guitar after he left Ibanez later in the 1990s. In 2011, he endorsed the Carvin FG1, a thin hollow body guitar made in the US. He signed with Victor Entertainment in 1989 as part of a five-album agreement, and released Thunder from Down Under the following year. The 1990s began for Gambale with a pair of albums—Truth in Shredding (1990) and Centrifugal Funk (1991)—as part of The Mark Varney Project. These were collaborations with fellow guitarists Allan Holdsworth, Brett Garsed and Shawn Lane, in a jazz fusion supergroup concept put together by Mark Varney. Around this time, he served as head of the guitar department of the Los Angeles Music Academy. In the 2000s, having parted ways with Victor, Gambale started his own record label named Wombat Records after purchasing his entire Legato discography with the intention of reissuing it himself. A live double album, Resident Alien – Live Bootlegs, was released in 2001, along with Imagery Suite; a duet featuring classical guitarist Maurizio Colonna. He also released a studio album, Coming to Your Senses, on guitarist Steve Vai's Favored Nations label in 2000. Gambale has also been a member of the jazz fusion band Vital Information since 1988, with the group consisting of keyboardist Tom Coster, drummer Steve Smith and bassist Baron Browne. Furthermore, in a group known as GHS, he has released three collaborative albums with Steve Smith and bassist Stu Hamm through Mike Varney's jazz-orientated label, Tone Center Records. In addition to concert recordings, he released an instructional DVD called Concert with Class in 2003. A reunion with Chick Corea came about in 2004, and Gambale subsequently toured with the Chick Corea Elektric Band. In 2006 and 2010, he released two all-jazz studio albums in the form of Natural High and Natural Selection, respectively.

MAURIZIO COLONNA BIO

Maurizio Colonna was born in Turin in 1959, and is universally considered to be one of the greatest classical guitar players of our day. He began playing the guitar at the age of five and at the age of seven, he made his debut in the theatre as a soloist, playing soloist guitar in Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez (a concert for guitar and orchestra) accompained by the Angelicum Chamber Orchestra of Milan in the presence of the Concierto's composer Joaquin Rodrigo. One of today’s most representative and eclectic guitar players and composers, he is the author of numerous books on music history and guitar technique (F. Muzzio Editore), that can be found in the libraries of the most important European and American universities, and of compositions for guitar (published by Bèrben, Kramer-Emi, Panarecord, Playgame-Carisch) and for guitar and piano, composed together with pianist and composer Luciana Bigazzi (Bèrben). He has numerous discs and film soundtracks to his name, as composer and principal interpreter, produced in Rome, Turin, Milan, Los Angeles, Pasadena and Hollywood (Panarecord, Palladium-Ricordi, Sarx-Ducale, Playgame-Carisch, Nìccolò-Stradivarius), accompanied both by orchestras and by international soloists such as Alex Acuña, formerly of Weather Report, Paulinho Da Costa, Abraham Laboriel and the wind section of Heart, Wind & Fire. He is co-editorial manager of the Christmas Songs Collection (Ed. Bèrben), a collection of Christmas carols from all over the world, proposed by well-known musicians in highly personal versions. He has also recorded a number of CDs and videos, both as a soloist and together with Australian guitarist Frank Gambale (Playgame-Carisch, Libera-Egea, Libera-Edel), creating a significant niche for himself in the field of education and new guitar languages. He has been a guest several times on television programmes broadcast by RAI, the Italian broadcasting authority (even on Eurovision, playing the Adagio from the Concierto de Aranjez for guitar and orchestra, at the Venice Festival of 1981) and on other television networks, and at numerous international festivals. He has won several prizes, including the Special Prize from the Ente Nazionale dello Spettacolo, at the 9th Soundtrack Festival (Rome, July 23, 1991) and the International Show Business Prize – Fiuggi 1991 (Music section) at the Fiuggi Platea Europa Festival. His unique role in the contemporary music scene is confirmed by a number of performances that have become real cultural events: - he played the classical guitar in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, performing his own Nocturne arranged for guitar and orchestra, accompanied by members of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Santa Cecilia, on the occasion of the First Christmas Concert in the Vatican, (December 13, 1992); - in 1995 he played for the President of Italy in the Council Room of the Quirinale Palace in Rome; - on June 21 of the same year, in Piazza del Quirinale, he was a soloist at the Concerto per un Amico, a concert for humanitarian causes transmitted by Rai Due, which drew together international artists accompanied by the AMIT Symphony Orchestra of Rome, conducted by Renato Serio; - he was the first classical guitarist to be a guest of the San Remo Festival on February 19, 1996, introducing his spectacular guitar playing to millions of viewers (performing Panarea, a virtuoso piece he composed for solo guitar); - In September 1997 he was invited to take part in the celebrations for the 23rd Eucharistic Congress, and he performed in the Municipal Stadium in Bologna (broadcast live on Rai Uno); On January 5, 2000, he performed in a duo with Luciana Bigazzi at the Monastery of Santa Chiara in Naples, at the Concert of the Epiphany (televised on January 6, 2000 on Rai Uno and Rai International), performing two pieces for guitar, piano and orchestra. He returned to the same event the following year, playing in a duo with Frank Gambale. In 1997 BMG-Recordi published a book on him and his work, in which author Lorenza Cristina Sianesi not only tackled musical topics, but also explored Colonna’s views on contemporary classical music from a sociological viewpoint. Since 2000 he has increased significantly his composing, and he also teaches specialist master classes at prestigious Italian academies. In March 2005, he was invited again to the San Remo Festival, this time with singer Antonella Ruggiero and Frank Gambale. The CD “Colonna & Gambale live” (Libera-Egea) was released in May 2005, and was presented during the 2005 Summer Tour at well-known international festivals. In 2006, he contributed to found the NCM-New Classic Music label, which brought out an anthology of his work, “Guardando il mare” (Egea Distribution), and produced the CDs “Lacoste-Works for Piano” (2006) and “Passages-Works for Piano” (2008) by Luciana Bigazzi (Egea Distribution).
The CD “Bon Voyage”, recorded in duo with Frank Gambale, was released in May 2007 as part of the “Colonna & Gambale” artistic project (Libera/Edel).The “Colonna & Gambale” project was presented in India, in a series of concerts and on the television, in October 2007. In December 2008 he published the live album “Rock Waves-Electric Dreams of a Classical Guitar Player” (NCM – PKP Music inc.) in which he reinterprets his own version of some of the most famous pieces of world rock music. Il CD “The Secrets Of The Soul” (NCM–EGEA Distribution), issued in 2011, the guitar is the principal instrument in the recording accompained by an acoustic and electric ensemble, is the result of a long period of creative research, marked also by reflections which transcend the musical dimension. He is the official testimonial of both the American La Bella brand (with a set of strings known as the “Maurizio Colonna Professional Series”), and the Spanish guitar-maker Ramirez. - Italian Cultural Institute of London (UK) © 2008-2011 Maurizio Colonna http://www.mauriziocolonna.com/index_b.html