Biography
Guitarist James Silberstein has never ranked among the most prominent figures in jazz, yet he stands out as a capable and vigorously swinging improviser who has enriched the New York City scene from the late 1970s forward. Although he can handle electric jazz-funk and has accompanied non-jazz acts such as the Drifters, straight-ahead jazz remains his central pursuit, and those familiar with his work view him as a hard bop and post-bop stylist who deeply admires the pre-fusion guitarists of earlier decades. His chief influences are drawn almost exclusively from bebop, hard bop, and post-bop players who rose to prominence in the 1940s, 1950s, or 1960s, among them Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow as well as Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and the young, straight-ahead George Benson of the 1960s rather than the more commercial, R&B-oriented musician he became later. Born in New York City, Silberstein spent his childhood and adolescence in suburban White Plains, New York. He took up the guitar at age twelve; when he turned sixteen his family returned to Manhattan, and two years afterward, in Central Park, the eighteen-year-old encountered Brazilian guitarist Gaudencio Thiago de Mello. Mello strongly nurtured Silberstein’s commitment to straight-ahead jazz guitar and directed him toward Brazilian players such as Bola Sete and Baden Powell. Additional mentors during Silberstein’s late teens and early twenties included Sam Brown, with whom he performed duo engagements, and the late Tim Breen, a little-known jazz musician who nonetheless backed Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons and similar non-jazz artists. During the same period Silberstein studied with Bucky Pizzarelli and Chuck Wayne; he has recalled that Breen was “probably my biggest guitar influence.” In the early 1980s Silberstein departed New York for a steady engagement at a resort hotel in Georgia. After that stint he spent roughly eighteen months in Miami, where he formed a friendship with guitarist Randy Johnston, before returning to New York later in the decade. There he worked with fellow guitarists Attila Zoller and Peter Leitch, appeared with pop singer Norah Jones prior to her rise to fame, and performed alongside the late tenor saxophonist Carter Jefferson, best known for his association with trumpeter Woody Shaw. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s Silberstein frequently played private parties, and it was on that circuit that he met bassist Tony Cimorosi. Cimorosi repeatedly urged him, after years of live work, to enter a studio and document his own album. Taking the advice, Silberstein released his debut recording as a leader, Song for Micaela, on the Manhattan-based Consolidated Artists Productions label in the summer of 2004; he and Cimorosi served as co-producers.
Albums
