Bio:
Bob Lanzetti is a Brooklyn, NY based professional guitarist, composer, producer, and educator. He has performed and recorded with many artists throughout the NYC area as well as played in over 40 countries with the three time Grammy® Award-Winning jazz/funk collective, Snarky Puppy.
Growing up on the Jersey Shore, Bob had the fortune of studying music with NYC area based guitar greats Chris Buono, David “Fuze” Fiuczynski, and Vic Juris. In 2000, Bob moved to Denton, TX to further his education at the University of North Texas where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Jazz Studies. In addition to his studies he was fortunate enough to get involved in the thriving R&B and Gospel music scene in the DFW area as well as meet the musicians who would go on to form the core of Snarky Puppy.
As a member of Snarky Puppy, Bob has had the opportunity to contribute as a writer, arranger, and guitarist, playing on every recorded release and performing all over the world. The Pups have earned three GRAMMY Awards to date. Best R&B Performance in 2014 ("Something" featuring Lalah Hathaway), and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2016 and 2017 ("Sylva" with Metropole Orkest and "Culcha Vulcha", respectively).
Since 2006, Bob has been residing in Brooklyn, NY. There he has become an in-demand session guitarist performing and recording with many artists including Tommy Sims, Bokanté, Michelle Willis, Cory Henry, Ghost-Note (Robert “Sput” Searight/Nate Werth), Lucy Woodward, Musiq Soulchild, Bilal, Banda Magda, Underground System, and many others.
In addition to sideman work, Bob writes, records, produces, and performs his own original compositions with his quintet. His debut record, Whose Feet are These That are Walking, was released September 29th, 2017, with a tour to follow. Bob has composed and recorded the score for two dance films for the Allendance Company as well as performed improvised solo guitar music for yoga and dance classes.
As an educator Bob teaches music and guitar out of his Brooklyn studio, has given clinics around the world, and has worked in outreach programs through Carnegie Hall for underprivileged teens to write, record, and perform their own original music.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).