Amanda Monaco

Guitarist and composer Amanda Monaco has performed at venues such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Birdland, Jazz Standard, and the Kennedy Center, and with artists such as Milt Hinton, Steve Wilson, Rufus Reid, and the Mingus Orchestra. She has released six albums, and her current jazz projects include her eclectic quartet, Deathblow; the rambunctious organ quartet Glitter; and the all-female jazz sextet Lioness. Her new music ensemble, the Pirkei Avot Project, performs her original music with lyrics from selected verses from a collection of rabbinical teachings with the same name, compiled in the third century C.E.

According to Clifford Allen of the New York City Jazz Record, Monaco’s guitar playing is “well within the modernist canon, but quite distinctive: her phrasing is often made up of tartly dissonant chords and insistent yet off-kilter repetitions that remind one of Grant Green by way of Andrew Hill….her playing is utterly unique, a breath of fresh air in the cookie-cutter climes of both mainstream and free jazz.”