Jack DeSalvo Musician - All About Jazz

Updated: September 29, 2022

Born: October 15, 1957

Jack DeSalvo, born in New York City, developed his extraordinary guitar style from a deep immersion into modern jazz, classical guitar and his own prolific compositional output. He has been compared to artists as diverse as Ralph Towner and John McLaughlin and has studied guitar with Bill Connors and Leonid Bolotine, composition with Ariada Mikéshina (herself a student of Richard Strauss) and at Berklee College of Music as well as with composer and theorist George Russell. DeSalvo performs mainly with his own trio and quartet and the group Quintrepid, which includes Jack on guitar, Matt Lambiase on flugelhorn, Chris Forbes on piano, double-bassist Dmitry Ishenko and drummer Tom Cabrera. All About Jazz calls Quintrepid “ a swinging collective with a fresh sound”.

Hailed in THE WIRE magazine as “masterful”, Jack DeSalvo has performed on over 100 albums with over 30 under his name. He is featured on numerous classic jazz albums, including Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Red Warrior, Spontaneous Combustion by the group D3, Transparencies with Karl Berger, and Anthony Cox, and Liquide Stones in duo with Arthur Lipner. He has performed worldwide, including at jazz festivals and clubs in Europe.

Jack DeSalvo is a founder of, and producer for Unseen Rain Records and also a multi-instrumentalist playing (besides classical, steel-string, 12-string and electric guitars) cello, mandolin, banjo, keyboards, etc.

Guitarist Jack DeSalvo: While We Sleep & Quintrepid on Unseen Rain

by Mark Sullivan
November 4, 2020

Guitarist/composer Jack DeSalvo has had a long, diverse career emphasizing fusion and free playing. His most visible gig was with Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, but since co-founding the record label Unseen Rain Records he has played on or produced a wide variety of music. For example, his duet album Soldani Dieci Anni (Unseen Rain Records, 2016) with guitarist Dom Minasi contained both free improvisation and mainstream jazz playing, performed on various acoustic guitars. Two recent Unseen Rain releases showcase ...

His duet album Lumens with German/Swiss saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen received praise on both sides of the Atlantic, “I have been completely bowled over by this album since it arrived for review a few weeks ago.” – Nick Lea, Jazz Views, “Nicole Johänntgen and Jack DeSalvo pulled out all the stops at the recording session for “Lumens”. Guitar and saxophone play almost hands-free with the themes and find the perfect balance in terms of sound.” – Georg Wassmuth, SWR2, “(DeSalvo’s) conception is pure jazz, comping, accenting and prodding Johänntgen’s watery lines on alto and soprano.” – Downbeat

"Using both acoustic and electric instruments, DeSalvo demonstrates technique, intelligence and imagination with a broad streak of lyricism and passion in what amounts to one of the better guitar voices to be heard in improvised music these days." —Cadence

Of Jack DeSalvo & Tom Cabrera's Juniper Wondering Sound says: "This is the kind of music that results from artists who invest years in learning their instruments and expressing them in ways that fall outside normal conventions. DeSalvo and Cabrera have partnered their guitars and percussion before, and that investment, too, bears fruit on their newest. This music has the heart and soul of the Cherry/Walcott/Vasconcelos Codona trio recordings… an earthy ambiance that emanates strength from a wise economy of notes and beats. Music that transcends genre, behaves as if it doesn’t even see the point of it. Also, great music to just kick back and listen to its particular serenity fill the room."

"When you listen to Jack DeSalvo, it’s immediately apparent that he has an enormous musical vocabulary. Renaissance classical, garage rock, straight ahead jazz, downtown skronk and traditional mandolin melodies are all part of his musical DNA. But when you hear DeSalvo improvise on classical guitar, you’re hearing music of that precise moment. He has many influences (and there are as many poets, philosophers and thinkers as there are musicians)..." —Mitch Goldman, WKCR

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