Biography
Award-winning jazz guitarist Paul Bollenback first cultivated an affinity for exotic sounds during a three-year family residence in India that began when he reached the age of 11 and they relocated to New Delhi. Those formative impressions resurfaced years afterward in his Challenge Records debut, Original Visions. The follow-up album, Double Gemini, attracted critical attention and was selected as CD of the Month by both the Newark jazz station WBGO and 20th Century Jazz Magazine. Bollenback remained on the Challenge roster for his next recording, Soul Grooves.
He first held a nylon-string guitar at seven, when his father—an equally passionate music lover who played trumpet—gave him the instrument. After the family returned to the United States when Bollenback was 14, he encountered rock & roll and began playing electric guitar, again a gift from his father. Hearing Miles Davis proved decisive for his musical direction.
Bollenback pursued music studies at the University of Miami and later completed eight years of private instruction with Asher Zlotnik in Baltimore. In 1993, the same year he began a European tour, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, in partnership with the Virginia Commission on the Arts, for “New Music for Three Jazz Guitars.” The Washington Area Music Awards named him Musician of the Year in 1997, the year he joined the music faculty at American University. SESAC recognized two of his compositions, “Romancin’ the Moon” and “Wookies’ Revenge,” both featured on Joey DeFrancesco’s Reboppin’; DeFrancesco later appeared on Bollenback’s Soul Grooves.
The Litchfield Jazz Festival Summer Music School appointed Bollenback artist-in-residence, and he also performs as a featured artist in Duquesne University’s Summer Guitar & Bass Workshop. He has appeared on numerous television programs, including Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, Joan Rivers, and Good Morning America. His stage collaborations encompass Charlie Byrd, Arturo Sandoval, Herb Ellis, Stanley Turrentine, Spyro Gyra’s Scott Ambush, and Della Reese.
He first held a nylon-string guitar at seven, when his father—an equally passionate music lover who played trumpet—gave him the instrument. After the family returned to the United States when Bollenback was 14, he encountered rock & roll and began playing electric guitar, again a gift from his father. Hearing Miles Davis proved decisive for his musical direction.
Bollenback pursued music studies at the University of Miami and later completed eight years of private instruction with Asher Zlotnik in Baltimore. In 1993, the same year he began a European tour, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant, in partnership with the Virginia Commission on the Arts, for “New Music for Three Jazz Guitars.” The Washington Area Music Awards named him Musician of the Year in 1997, the year he joined the music faculty at American University. SESAC recognized two of his compositions, “Romancin’ the Moon” and “Wookies’ Revenge,” both featured on Joey DeFrancesco’s Reboppin’; DeFrancesco later appeared on Bollenback’s Soul Grooves.
The Litchfield Jazz Festival Summer Music School appointed Bollenback artist-in-residence, and he also performs as a featured artist in Duquesne University’s Summer Guitar & Bass Workshop. He has appeared on numerous television programs, including Entertainment Tonight, The Tonight Show, The Today Show, Joan Rivers, and Good Morning America. His stage collaborations encompass Charlie Byrd, Arturo Sandoval, Herb Ellis, Stanley Turrentine, Spyro Gyra’s Scott Ambush, and Della Reese.
Albums
