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An extremely versatile jazz guitarist, Frank Vignola has demonstrated that he is capable of playing everything from fusion and commercial pop-jazz to hard bop, post-bop, and swing. The native New Yorker has a wide variety of influences; everyone from Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, and Pat Metheny to Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian has affected his playing in some way. For Vignola, different influences have asserted themselves at different times -- the Reinhardt or Christian influence might be especially prominent in a swing environment, whereas he has sometimes sounded more Metheny-ish in fusion or pop-jazz/NAC settings. And he might be mindful of Montgomery or Pass on a hard bop or post-bop project. Born on suburban Long Island on December 30, 1965, Vignola was raised in the New York area. The Italian-American started playing the guitar at the age of five and grew up admiring a variety of guitarists. Far from a jazz snob, Vignola never listened to jazz exclusively and was also a major fan of rock, R&B, and pop. The guitarists that he admired ranged from jazz musicians to rock icons like Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen. As a young adult, Vignola studied at the Cultural Arts Center of Long Island and went on to enjoy a lot of sideman gigs in the 1980s. The New Yorker was 27 when, in 1993, he signed with Concord Jazz and recorded his first Concord session as a leader, Appel Direct. Several more Concord releases followed in the 1990s, and the early 2000s found Vignola recording for Nagel-Heyer as well as Acoustic Disc.
from Wikipedia:
Frank Vignola (b. December 30, 1965, Long Island) is an American jazz guitarist.
Vignola began on guitar at age five. While he never listened to jazz exclusively, he has a wide range of influences, such as Les Paul, Eddie Van Halen and Frank Zappa. He later studied at the Cultural Arts Center of Long Island. He worked extensively as a sideman in the 1980s, with artists such as Madonna, Leon Redbone, and Ringo Starr. In 1993 he signed with Concord Jazz, when he was 27 and has released several albums under his own name since then. He has written 18 instructional guitar books and has recorded multiple instuctional CD-ROMs for Truefire.com.
