Paul Bollenback

From Freepedia

Paul Bollenback is a contemporary jazz guitarist and composer. His emotionally expressive style and eclectic approach is the result of years of listening, studying, and playing music by Carlos Santana, Yes, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Kenny Burrell, Herbie Hancock, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter and Lenny Breau. At the age of seven, Paul received a nylon-string guitar from his father, a classically trained trumpeter and lover of music. When Paul was eleven, his family relocated to New Delhi, India, on a three-year consulting engagement with United States Aid. It was there that he cultivated his life-long interest in exotic musical sounds and timbres, which is evident in his 1995 recording, Original Visions. When his family returned to the United States, Paul's father bought him an electric guitar and he began listening to rock-and-roll. Then he heard Miles Davis and his world changed forever.

Bollenback attended the University of Miami as a Music major. He later studied privately for eight years with Baltimore-based professor of Theory/Composition Asher Zlotnik. In 1993 while touring in Europe Paul was awarded a grant from the Virginia Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts to compose and perform "New Music for Three Jazz Guitars". In 1997, Bollenback was named Musician of the Year at the Washington Area Music Awards, and became an Adjunct Professor of Music at the American University in Washington, DC. His two compositions, "Wookies's Revenge" and "Romancin' the Moon" (featured on Joey DeFrancesco's Rebboppin') earned him the SESAC award for original songs. He was later invited to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Paul was featured at the 1998 World Internet Trade Show in Los Angeles, and his band opened the New York Guitar Show in May 1998 where he also performed with John Pisano.