New York City based jazz guitarist Charlie Apicella is the founder of Iron City.
LIVE in NYC marks the tenth release by hard bop and blues guitar wizard, Charlie Apicella. All nine tracks were recorded bootleg-style directly off the soundboard in a NYC club in the summer of 2023. Seven searing originals by Apicella are complemented by an explosive Pat Martino influenced version of Tito Puente’s Oye Como Va, and a ballad popularized by Elvis Presley.
Playing with Charlie on May 29 are Brad Whiteley on organ, Austin Walker on drums, and Mayra Casales on congas.
Charlie Apicella was voted onto the 84th and 86th annual DownBeat Readers Poll for Guitar.
Charlie Apicella is the founder and Program Director of BLUES ALIVE: Ancestral Voices of the Blues. He is recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from North Jersey Blues Society and serves on the Generation Blues education committee at The Blues Foundation in Memphis, TN. He has received numerous grants for his work preserving Ma Rainey‘s Legacy in collaboration with the Ma Rainey House Museum in Columbus, GA.
As a young guitarist he met his idol, B.B. King, who gave him critical advice and shared some stories. Apicella studied composition and improvisation with musical titans Yusef Lateef and Pat Martino and was trained as a historian by Archie Shepp and Billy Taylor. He is a lecturer and curator for the Yusef Lateef Estate and has collaborated with Lincoln Center, Vanderbilt University, and the Newport Jazz & Folk Festivals Foundation.
He has performed concerts and recorded with jazz legends Dave Holland, Sonny Fortune, John Blake, Jr., and Avery Sharpe and is guitarist for the Sonny Stitt Legacy Band. In 2022, he formed The Griots Speak with bassist William Parker, saxophonist Daniel Carter, and percussionist Juma Sultan, who is known for his work with Jimi Hendrix.
