Alex Pinto
Biography
Alex Pinto is an award winning guitarist and composer. Hailed as the most original guitarist on his way to 3rd prize at the 2008 Gibson Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition, Pinto brings a unique perspective to the instrument, drawing upon his diverse background and heritage. Having performed and studied with the likes of Ustad Aashish Khan, George Garzone, Larry Koonse, Charlie Haden, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, Vinny Golia and Jan Jarcyzk, Pinto’s style seamlessly blends jazz and rock with the rich tradition of Hindustani classical music.
The son of an Indian father who worked for the World Bank, Alex Pinto was born in the Washington, DC area in 1985 and lived in Poland and Russia for years at a stretch when his dad was posted there. (He began playing guitar at five while living in Warsaw.) “Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix were my initial guitar heroes,” Pinto says. “I got enamored withJohn Coltrane, and I still listen to recordings that span his career. And Hindustani music has been huge for me, masters like Ali Akbar Khan and Nikhil Banerjee, who makes me feel the same as Hendrix and Coltrane.”
After studying at McGill University and CalArts, Pinto was selected into the inaugural class of MusicianCorps Fellows for Music National Service and served as the music coordinator at Horace Mann middle school in San Francisco. Most recently he was a finalist in the 2010 Six String Theory Guitar Competition and just completed recording his debut album Inner State, featuring 7 of his original works.
“Young but precocious, guitarist Alex Pinto is someone to look out for. His compositions are unpredictably zig-zaggy, and many of them avoid locking into a groove..” Rachel Swan, East Bay Express
