Performances

See About the Performers for brief biographies of the musicians.

Barry Mitterhoff plays “Speranze Perdute” on a ca. 1928 mandolin by John D’Angelico. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Bob Grillo plays “Ah, Marie” on an archtop guitar (serial number 1002) by John D’Angelico. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Bob Grillo plays “Estrellita,” by Manuel Ponce, 1912, on a blonde New Yorker by John D’Angelico. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Bucky Pizzarelli plays “Darn That Dream,” written by Eddie De Lange and Jimmy Van Heusen on a 1932 guitar by John D’Angelico. Recorded August 10, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of Range Road Music Inc. (ASCAP), Jerry Leiber Music (ASCAP), Silver Seahorse Music LLC (ASCAP), Scarsdale Music Corp.	Bob Grillo plays “Come Sunday,” by Duke Ellington (1943) on a 1961 New Yorker archtop guitar by John D’Angelico. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Barry Mitterhoff and Woody Mann play “Poor Wayfarin’ Stranger,” a traditional spiritual, on an archtop mandolin ca. 1940 by John D’Angelico (Mitterhoff) and a 1937 New Yorker guitar by John D’Angelico (Mann). Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Barry Mitterhoff and Woody Mann play “Vicksburg Stomp,” by Charlie McCoy, Mississippi Mud Steppers, 1930, on a 1971 archtop mandolin (Mitterhoff) and an Excel archtop guitar, ca. 1985 (Mann) by James D’Aquisto. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Bob Grillo and Jeffrey Mironov play “Autumn Leaves,” by Joseph Kosma and Jacques Prevert, 1945 on a Centura model archtop guitar (Grillo) and a Centura Deluxe model archtop guitar (Mironov) by James D’Aquisto. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Jeffrey Mironov plays an original composition on a flat-top guitar by James D’Aquisto. Recorded August 10, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Jeffrey Mironov plays “Beautiful Love” (acoustic version), by Haven Gillespie, Wayne King, Victor Young, and Egbert Van Alstyne, 1931, on the Classic model archtop guitar by James D’Aquisto. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Jeffrey Mironov plays “Beautiful Love” (electric version), by Haven Gillespie, Wayne King, Victor Young, and Egbert Van Alstyne, 1931, on the Classic model archtop guitar by James D’Aquisto. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Jeffrey Mironov plays “Solar,” arranged by Miles Davis, 1954. Concord Music Group, on the 1995 Centura Deluxe model archtop guitar by James D’Aquisto. Recorded August 11, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Steve Miller plays an improvisation on the 1995 Centura Deluxe by James D’Aquisto. Recorded October 21, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Steve Miller plays an improvisation on the 1995 Centura Deluxe by James D’Aquisto. Recorded October 21, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Woody Mann plays “Uptown” on the Teardrop archtop guitar by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Barry Mitterhoff plays “Soldier’s Joy” on a Baby Grand model mandolin by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Barry Mitterhoff and Woody Mann play “Panhandle Rag,” by Leon McAuliffe (1949) on the Radio City mandolin (Mitterhoff) and guitar (Mann) by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Woody Mann plays an improvisation on the Sun King archtop guitar by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Woody Mann plays “Lennie’s Lament” on the Sun King archtop guitar by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Woody Mann plays “Mr. Guitar” on the Deco Vox archtop guitar by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.	Woody Mann plays “Requiem” on the Radio City archtop guitar, 2000 by John Monteleone. Recorded August 12, 2010, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

About the Performers

Bob Grillo, a native New Yorker, studied with Al Peterson, then Sal Salvador. At a New York gig in 1960, he met James D’Aquisto, who was a bass player and an apprentice to John D’Angelico. He visited D’Angelico’s shop on Kenmare Street and ordered a blonde New Yorker, which was finished in November 1961. After ten years of touring, Grillo’s guitar needed cosmetic repairs, and D’Aquisto re-lacquered and re-bound it in 1970. Grillo continues to play his D’Angelico New Yorker, most recently with the Andy Farber Orchestra, both in live performances and on the 2009 album This Could Be the Start of Something Big.

Woody Mann is renowned both as a performer and as a teacher. He received his first musical schooling in the living room of the Reverend Gary Davis, the legendary blues, gospel, and ragtime guitarist. He has performed with modern-day blues musicians John Fahey, British great Jo-Ann Kelly, and early masters Bukka White and Son House. He complemented the tutelage of the Rev. Davis with formal training at the Juilliard School and a period of intense study with noted jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. He has toured the world, recorded eleven solo albums, been a faculty member at the New School in New York, and taught countless guitarists through his many books and DVDs. His close personal friendships with James D’Aquisto and John Monteleone have been a unique part of his life and music.

Jeffrey Mironov is a Manhattan-based guitarist who has enjoyed a very active and prolific career in the New York recording scene. He has performed on numerous albums with Michael Franks, James Taylor, Art Garfunkel, Gladys Knight, Paul Simon, Dave Grusin, Herbie Mann, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Natalie Cole, to name a few. He has also performed for many movie soundtracks, as well as for television and radio commercials. He has been awarded the noteworthy NARAS [National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences] Best Player Award for electric guitar performance a number of times. Throughout his career, Jeffrey has owned, played, and treasured several guitars made by John D’Angelico and James D’Aquisto. Of his relationship with James D’Aquisto he writes:

I came to own a number of Jimmy’s instruments and spent rare and wonderful days in his small Greenport, Long Island, workshop. While working on the guitars that needed adjusting or repairs, he shared many lovely, thoughtful, and sometimes humorous memories with me regarding his apprenticeship with John D’Angelico and the uninterruptible creative evolution and tradition he came to fulfill and extend. I am blessed and honored in knowing John D’Angelico through the guitar he made, which I played for many years, and then in knowing and being known by James D’Aquisto, whose friendship and trust continue to guide, influence, and change my life.

Barry Mitterhoff has developed an international reputation for his versatility on the mandolin, having mastered musical styles as diverse as bluegrass, opera, klezmer, Dixieland, old-time, classical, Brazilian, Italian, and nineteenth-century American duo. He has performed in concert and at music festivals throughout the U.S., Canada, Japan, and Europe, and has played with world-famous musicians, including Jorma Kaukonen, Tony Trischka, Jerry Hadley, Tom Chapin, Hazel Dickens, and Eugene Chadbourne. His compositions and performances can also be heard on several film scores, including You’ve Got Mail, Mickey Blue Eyes, Two Family House, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Rookie.

For more than six decades, the legendary Bucky Pizzarelli has been a fixture in jazz since the early fifties. The list of big bands and vocalists with whom Bucky has performed and recorded reads like a veritable “Who’s Who” of jazz. One of the most solid rhythm players, Pizzarelli has always been in high demand, playing and touring early on with Benny Goodman, Zoot Sims, Bud Freeman, and Stephane Grappelli, and, later, recording with George Van Eps, Carl Kress, and George Barnes. His superior mastery of the seven-string guitar is unparalleled, and his very personal style sets him apart. [Adapted from "Bucky Pizzarelli" in All About Jazz www.allaboutjazz.com (February 2011).]