All guitars by Javier Rosario

“Amazing, virtuosic, dynamic, impeccable and powerful guitar playing.” - Guitarist, Joe Morris

https://www.javierrosarioguitar.com/

An impeccable CV.

“Guitar virtuoso, composer and bandleader, Javier Rosario is the first ever Michel Camilo Scholarship winner. The scholarship was an initiative of the Dominican born, Grammy and Emmy Award winning pianist. It was the first scholarship of its kind in the history of the Dominican Republic, where Javier was born in Santo Domingo. In 2006, Javier attended Berklee College of Music with a full scholarship, graduating with the highest ratings ever given to a guitarist. In 2009, he performed at the Berklee Jazz and Blues Guitar Night: a concert which only featured the very top players of the entire school. Javier is one of only a few Dominicans who have performed at the world-famous Blue Note jazz club in NYC as part of their Emerging Jazz Series. In 2010, Javier decided to further his studies at the Longy School of Music of Bard College with a master’s degree. There he was acknowledged by his guitar teachers as possibly the highest-level guitarist ever to enter the jazz program. Javier is a bandleader who travels the northeast and southwest of the United States and the Dominican Republic with his trio, performing his original music and promoting his debut album, Javier Rosario Trio Vol. I: A Celebration of Life. He is also an active member of the Matt Savage Groove Experiment, a fusion band led by Bösendorfer piano artist, Matt Savage, with whom he has recorded music for two jazz documentaries: Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story and Life Crime as well as the album Splash Variations.”

Javier Rosario is a truly particular musician, with his own personal vision and ambition. Iconically, he is perfect. He numbers his CDs, his albums, like volumes. A sign of methodical, orderly, progressive attention. Volumes like fragments, like articulated photographs aimed at a broader narrative extended over time. Shards of frozen music. Furthermore, we immediately realize how important the electric guitar is for Rosario, even before putting his CDs on the player, we immediately find it in the cover photo and in the other photos inside the CDs: Javier Rosario never gets photographed without it. If you look at his website, you will see that this is often the case. Javier and his guitar seem to be one. And he's right. All of his albums seem meticulously constructed around the sound of a guitar

“Javier Rosario Trio Vol. 1: A Celebration of Life (2019)”

A Gibson 335. A now classic shape for the iconicity of the electric guitar. A versatile, ductile guitar with an easily identifiable sound. An object of industrial design, the result of a scale production that aims to produce perfect, identical, replicable copies sold on the mass market. From a tool of this type it would seem impossible that any form of personal art could derive. Theodore Adorno would still be convinced of this, especially after his essay on jazz. But music doesn't care about the Frankfurt school and we, fortunately, love the Gibson 335. A wonderful guitar, in which the particular construction of the case, the woods used and the humbucker pickups contribute in fact to forming a very recognizable sound, from 'sweet attack and slightly emphasized on the mid frequencies, a very different sound both from that of traditional arch-top guitars (darker and richer in harmonics) and from that of solid-body guitars (more ringing and open). The list of musicians who have used it to sign their music and their style is so long that I don't even try to write it, it is a list that goes beyond musical genres and styles and which, in 2019, saw the entry of guitarist Javier Rosario, then a promising young American jazz player.

If you listen to him play in a trio, with Zak King on drums and Scott Kiefner on double bass, you will hear the sound of his 335, a slightly distorted, almost crunchy sound, that sound that comes from a nervous electric blues combined with a phrasing that would draw applause even to the late Allan Holdsworth. He's fast, nervous, conceptually instinctive, almost Coltrenian when he goes off on a tangent and has a beautiful sound, with that distortion placed at the right point, which doesn't cover the melody but enhances it.

We are in 2019, practically an era ago, and Javier Rosario is on his first CD as a leader and he does it with this "Javier Rosario Trio Vol.1: A Celebration of Life" where there are undoubtedly, as it should be, some quotes but where there is also a lot of creativity and new ideas. In this he is well supported by the other two elements of the trio. Nervous, fast, tireless. They convey a sense of communicative urgency, as if they have a lot to say in a short time. “A Celebration of Life” communicates a musical semantics consistent with the frenetic times we were already living then and expresses a desire and an urgent push towards the new, towards an innovation of language consistent with the giants of the Gibson 335.

“Javier Rosario Trio Vol. 2: Yes! (2023)”

Four years were needed for Rosario to complete Volume 2. In the meantime he changed guitar, Rosario adopted a Kiesel Leia. The furthest thing from the Gibson 335. The Keisel is a headless guitar, it has no headstock and the intonation is done with Allen keys at the end of the body, furthermore, the version chosen by Rosario has only one pick up at the bridge. A light, practical, minimal guitar to say the least. A real technical and stylistic leap that could not fail to affect the new album.

“Javier Rosario Trio Vol. 2: Yes!” it's a fast and dense album. When I listened to it for the first time I couldn't believe the length, basically an EP, just under 26 minutes or so with seven tracks. If the first Volume was the classic presentation album, where the newcomer introduced himself and paid homage to his influences, this "Yes" makes a clear leap in maturity. Rosario's sound becomes more saturated and nervous, and, if the virtuosic level of the entire trio remains intact, what benefits is the interplay, simply perfect between all its members. Rosario is the band leader, but leaves more space to his associates Zak King (drums) and Scott Kiefner (bass). “Javier Rosario Trio Vol. 2: Yes!” it is an album that bends time and makes it longer, where synthesis proves to be an essential skill to conquer the listener. The matrix is still the jazz-rock one of the first volume, but here the trio shows greater maturity and a spasmodic attention to every single detail.

What should we expect for Volume 3? Another change of guitars? A further evolution within the jazz-rock genre? Maybe a solo album? I'm sure Javier Rosario is working on it.