Michael Bianco: Guitar Innovations By Jimmy Caterine February 12, 2006
Well- I decided that since this is primarily a site that is focused on guitar, I thought it might be nice to do a few reviews on guitar oriented music. What a concept, eh? This past Christmas I spent some time surfing the net and various community sites on the web to find some new and interesting guitar players. I found two that I was very impressed with and I have been enjoying their beautiful music for a little over a month now. One of these players takes a more conventional approach and the other is not conventional at all.
Enter the brilliant Michael Bianco. I discovered Michael’s music while browsing MySpace. I found myself at his profile watching a video of him playing an instrument that I had never seen before. He was playing a 14 string guitar built for him by Bob Mason. It’s similar to the 12 string tapping guitars designed by Stu Box, except all the strings are on one wide neck as opposed to two regular guitar necks. According to Bianco, the wide neck helps to create the guitars incredible sustain.
On Guitar Innovations, Michael uses a few different instruments based on the guitar, including a Chapman Stick, 7 & 14 string guitars and another instrument that is new to me- the Z-tar. All of this is amazing in itself and I haven’t even expressed how majestically Mr. Bianco plays all of these instruments, yet.
I’ll begin describing Guitar Innovations as a CD that every guitarist should own. It should be revered as a place to strive for. I’m not saying that this style of playing is for everyone, but as far as I am concerned Michael Bianco is one of the masters of the two handed tapping technique. He deserves his place right along side Stanley Jordon and Jennifer Batten. His compositions are beautiful, mostly new age with a classical feel. Some of them come across with a slight Latin influence, possibly because Bianco has spent several years living in Southern Florida.
All of this and still I cannot say enough good things about this fabulous artist. After writing to Michael to let him know I was doing a review of his upcoming CD, he took time out to call me and talk shop. What a down to earth person he is. Very humble and just a really great person all around, it seems. While complimenting him on such great work, he stopped me to compliment my work and took the spotlight off himself to share a handful of other great players. This blew me away. In my book Michael Bianco is what I would call a true artist because true artists love true artists. It may be a little known fact but it is, in fact, fact.
I highly recommend Michael Bianco's Guitar Innovations to every guitarist on the planet and anyone who enjoys new sounds and music that is relaxing yet has a sense of adventure. Basically I believe anyone who loves music will enjoy this CD. Check out some of Michaels other work as well. He has recorded quite a few CDs over the years while hiding out somewhere in Ft. Lauderdale.
: 
