Frank Vignola’s Guitar Night

Frank Vignola’s Guitar Night brings a four-piece jazz guitar program to Birdland Theater: Vignola and Pasquale Grasso on guitar, with Gary Mazzaroppi on bass and Alex Raderman on drums. Vignola leads the weekly Birdland series, modeled after journeyman guitarist John Pisano’s Los Angeles Guitar Night. The format is a survey of jazz guitar, drawing on tunes from the standard repertoire and making room for weekly guest artists; no additional guest is named for this date. Expect the guitars to lead the conversation, with bass and drums shaping the set around them.

Vignola is known as a first-call collaborator whose virtuosity has made him “the guitarist of choice” for Ringo Starr, Madonna, Donald Fagen, Tommy Emmanuel, the Boston Pops and the New York Pops, among others. His own site also notes that Les Paul placed him on his “Five Most Admired Guitarists List.” Writing about one Guitar Night performance, a reviewer called Vignola “an electrifying player” and singled out the guitarists’ “complexity, precision and wit,” along with their “decisive soloing personalities.” That combination of standard-song fluency and contrasting guitar voices is the point of this ongoing series.