Aaron Weinstein & Matt Munisteri: Tribute to Stéphane Grappelli & Django Reinhardt New York City based jazz virtuosos bring a very special "hot jazz" tribute program to the Rubber City, featuring Aaron Weinstein (violin), Matt Munisteri (guitar, vocals)

About Aaron

Called “the Groucho of the violin” by Tony Bennett and “a perfect musician” by jazz guitar legend, Bucky Pizzarelli, Aaron Weinstein “is rapidly establishing himself as one of his instrument’s rare jazz masters.” (Don Heckman, International Review of Music). As a featured soloist, Aaron has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, Blue Note, and abroad at jazz festivals in England, France, Switzerland, Iceland, and Israel.
 
Aaron has performed and recorded with an array of jazz icons including: Les Paul, Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, Dick Hyman, Dave Frishberg, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross as well as musicians as varied as New York Pops conductor, Skitch Henderson and rock guitarist, Jay Geils. He has written arrangements for vocalists including Christine Ebersole, Linda Lavin, and the Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel. Additionally, Aaron is a respected mandolinist, widely regarded as one of the instrument’s leading exponents in the jazz idiom.
 
Aaron is the recipient of a New York City Nightlife Award and New York City Bistro Award. He is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music where he was awarded a full four-year talent-based scholarship. With the release of his Arbors Records debut, A Handful of Stars, (called “the rebirth of the hot jazz violin” by Nat Hentoff) Aaron became the youngest jazz musician to have recorded for this prestigious jazz record label. Additionally, Aaron is a bow tie rights activist. He is also lactose intolerant but can find at least one agreeable item on any restaurant menu, a feat he’s called, “my greatest talent.” Aaron lives in New York City.
 
 

About Matt

“A present day ironist with a prewar (first world war that is) heart…” (The New Yorker)
 
It’s a daunting task, this business of encapsulating Matt Munisteri’s musical self. As the sparkling guitarist on several chart-topping jazz CDs; a critically lauded songwriter and nimble lyricist; an urban banjo-warrior and a sometime session musician; a selfless and devoted sideman; a wry-yet-honest singer; an engaging and winning front-man; and an arranger whose ear-pulling re-inventions of well-traveled songs have contributed to Grammy winning CDs for artists such as Loudon Wainwright and Catherine Russell, Matt’s various dueling career paths might at first seem difficult to reconcile.
 
Additionally you’d be hard-pressed to find another Brooklyn native who grew up playing bluegrass banjo since he was in the single digits; who has recorded with artists as divergent as consummate jazz balladeer “Little” Jimmy Scott and 1980′s avante-noise godfather Glenn Branca (really Matt?!); who is regarded as a contemporary master of 1920′s and ’30′s jazz styles, and is an ardent student of American folk traditions, but counts among his regular creative cohorts several musicians associated with the New York Downtown music world. Yet ultimately Matt’s journey through 20th century American music yields a vision which feels intrinsically whole, with his own music always presenting as a unified and one-of-a-kind reflection of a life immersed in all the far-flung variants of American Popular Song. It might be easier then to say that whatever he’s currently up to, it will be a living reconciliation of rural and urban, long-gone and contemporary, individual experience and canonized scripture. Plus he’s always guaranteed to swing like mad while busy concocting said reconciliatin’.

$25