Lou Volpe

To purchase Lou Volpe's CD, "Can You Hear That?" send us an e-mail and we'll direct you to our secure purchase site.
Lou Volpe will be featured on Mike Byrnes' The Guitar Show ; check Cablevision for broadcast times / dates -- and hear the master jazz man talk about guitar technique and his unique style.
Volpe received excellent reviews for his CDs, "Can You Hear That?" and "Undercovers" in the November 2008 issue of 20th Century Guitar magazine .
Coming Up:
* A feature in Just Jazz Guitar magazine
* A new CD, with a jazz quartet, set for release in Spring 2009; it will include jazz classics and original tunes
Lou Volpe is the "Featured Artist of the Week" at GuitarPlayerZen.com , starting March 5, 2008. If you have a minute, check it out (click link above) and leave a comment about Lou or the article.
To purchase Lou Volpe's newest CD, "Undercovers," visit this link at CDBaby.com.
Say “jazz” and you think “red hot cool.” Say “jazz guitar” and Lou Volpe is the ultimate living synonym.
Recently Volpe's been around music legends, including "The Boss" Bruce Springsteen, as well as on gigs with Felix Cavaliere and Gene Cornish of Rascals fame.
Yet, for more than two decades, the guitar of this Bronx, New York, native has been a standard on the New York music scene. His resume of album guitar performance, touring stints, and music production, composition and arranging reads like a “who’s who” of masters in the music entertainment industry. Volpe has toured with Bette Midler and Judy Collins, and has co-produced, composed, arranged and toured extensively with the legendary Herbie Mann.
Other performance and recording credits include work with Peggy Lee, Chaka Khan, Bo Diddley, David “Fathead” Newman, Chet Baker, Liza Minnelli, Lionel Hampton, Roberta Flack, Phoebe Snow, The Manhattan Transfer and Herbie Hancock. Check out Volpe's "Lou and Friends" photo album in this MySpace!
A review of Herbie Mann's group in The New York Times during the time that Volpe was playing with Mann, called the material they performed "imaginately varied." Expanding on that description, the reviewer stated: "A straight, swinging, jazz treatment of Sonny Rollins's 'St. Thomas,' driven by Mr. Volpe's guitar, may be followed by a single chorus of 'The Nearness of You'... Mr. Mann's bright, bubbling, dancing flute may be expanded on a tape loop, Mr. Volpe's guitar simulates a sitar, surprisingly but very effectively, on 'It Ain't Necessarily So,' and they turn as unlikely a tune as 'Makin' Whoopee' into something approaching chamber music. These are fascinating explorations that produce a kind of jazz that is singular to Mr. Mann's group."
Volpe has taken his first-class talent “to the world.” After a friend of the musician sent his first solo CD, “Can You Hear That?” to a promoter in Shanghai, China, Volpe was asked to play two solo concerts and a few professional / teaching clinics in 2005.
He released his second solo guitar CD - "Undercovers" - in 2006. It features some classic Eric Clapton, Beatles, and Eagles, among others; the style is jazz and contemporary. Performing on the CD is Brazilian vocalist, Ithamara Koorax, whom Down Beat readers voted the “Best Female Jazz Singer.”
When he's not playing major jazz festivals, he's doing solo gigs, and gigs with his Lou Volpe group. ( Click here to see the photo album above of the jazzy cool feeling at one of Lou's frequent venues, the Starving Artist Cafe & Gallery on City Island, New York. Thanks to David Ram for this awesome video!) Playing is Lou's life - and it defines him. Critics have called Volpe’s ideas “forthright” and his tone, they say, “speaks the truth.” But for this New York guitar man, it’s all about the jazz – “red hot and cool.”