Live in the Lobby Jazz: Pasquale Grasso

See GRAMMY-winner who graced the cover of the prestigious DownBeat Magazine, Pasquale Grasso!

“The best guitar player I’ve heard in maybe my entire life is floating around now, Pasquale Grasso.”

– Pat Metheny

Born in Italy and now based in New York City, the 30-year- old guitarist Pasquale Grasso has developed an astounding technique and concept informed not by jazz guitarists so much as by bebop pioneers like Powell, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and the classical-guitar tradition. His new digital-only EP series, available beginning in June from Sony Masterworks, showcases Grasso in the solo-guitar format, where his intensive studies of both midcentury jazz and classical meld into a signature mastery that is, remarkably, at once unprecedented and evocative.

These days, Grasso teaches and maintains a packed gig schedule around New York, including frequent solo performances at the popular Greenwich Village haunt Mezzrow, where a regular Monday-night gig allowed him to develop his solo-arranging skillset. Not that Grasso thinks his work is done. “All [of the musicians I love are] inspiration for me to get new ideas and form my style, because it’s still growing,” Pasquale says. “And it’s gonna be growing until the day I die.”