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Biography
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Los Angeles-based guitarist, composer, and recording artist Neil Rambaldi is known for his virtuosic guitar abilities and epic brand of instrumental Rock Fusion with his Rock, Classical, Funk, Blues, Latin, Jazz, and World influences bursting at the seams. Sometimes adrenaline-pumping and other times on the mellow side of the spectrum, his songs are soulfully charged with an uncanny fire and introspection. It has become known that his songwriting is a force of no questionability.
Neil cites some of his greatest musical influences ranging anywhere from Eric Johnson to Beethoven, Led Zeppelin, Joe Satriani, Paco De Lucia, Steve Vai, Paganini, Al Di Meola, Cachao, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Van Halen, The Doobie Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Francisco Tarrega, and Yngwie Malmsteen among others. With such a wide range of influences, his style may be hard to classify by some, but it is loved by music fans from all over the world. Once his music is heard, it is instantly recognized as “Neil Rambaldi.”
Neil’s acclaimed solo debut album Perpetual Horizon has garnered radio airplay in 15 countries to date since its independent release on his own record label Prismism Music. The album, which was also produced and performed entirely by Neil with the exception of a keyboard guest appearance on one of the eleven tracks, has also accumulated countless rave reviews in numerous music publications and major music websites internationally including 20th Century Guitar Magazine (USA/Canada), Guitar Chef (Italy), Metal Era (Chile), and many more. In some of these publications as well as on live radio, Neil has been featured in several interviews both in the U.S. and abroad.
Growing up in a suburb of New York City, in New Jersey, Neil honed his skills as a musician and artist, playing shows with many different bands in a multitude of styles, including his own for several years in the Northeast. He also began doing session work and teaching guitar during that time.
As a live and studio session guitarist and producer, Neil has worked with many artists including former Universal Records recording artist Lilian Garcia, former A2 Records recording artist John Taglieri, Mausoleum Records’ Rivera/Bomma, Dreamscape Music Group’s Tiffany Nicole, and artist/songwriter Kenny Simmons, former member of the three-time Grammy award-winning group The Commodores. With Lilian Garcia, Neil has made appearances on both regional and national television in the U.S., and with John Taglieri, Neil has served as musical director for Taglieri’s live band in addition to his lead guitar duties.
Numerous tracks from both Perpetual Horizon and Neil’s upcoming second album have been licensed for use in various forms of media, and have been heard on both national and international television, including AMC TV, MTV, National Geographic International, Rush HD, and Voom HD. Neil's music has been heard in projects such as the Wii video game “Dancing With The Stars: We Dance!,” AMC TV's “Hollywood Icon,” Rush HD's action sport T.V. series “Nomads,” the feature film “199 Lives: The Travis Pastrana Story” (seen in theaters and on MTV), and many others.
In addition to his musical accomplishments as a guitarist, solo-artist, and composer, Neil has also become a highly sought guitar instructor over the years and is presently a faculty member at two L.A. institutions including Paul Green School of Rock in Hollywood.
Currently in the studio writing and recording his upcoming second solo album, Neil is also preparing his live band for extensive performances in support of it. Neil has this to say about the new album: “Writing and recording the record has been such a source of energy for me so far – one that I both feed into and off of. The process has been invigorating to say the least, and the album has revealed itself to be a strong representation of my journeys in the past few years. I’ve experienced so many changes and have evolved so much personally and musically, that I can’t wait to share with my fans and the rest of the world, what I’ve gathered through life so far. Hopefully, it can become the same source of energy for them as it has been for me.”
Since moving to the west coast in 2008, Neil’s musical roots continue to grow wider, deeper and finer. With an awe-inspiring creativity and his long-lived spirit, Neil speaks a universal language of fire and passion through his music that all people can relate to. It is the very fundamental sense of longing for something beautiful that we can connect with, and Neil delivers this very powerful feeling through his music. So take a journey down the lonesome highway, and discover “what is” Neil Rambaldi.
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From the land they call New Jersey, in a suburb of New York City, one of Neil Rambaldi's first signs of intrigue and affinity for music as a child was when he started looking through the piano bench in the living room wondering how some of the sheet music that he had found actually sounded. Within a year or so, around the age of 7, Neil picked up his first of three long since forgotten instruments -- the violin... followed by the alto-sax... and later on the trumpet some years later, with which Neil gained the "1st trumpet" position in his grammar school's humble little student orchestra. Though, as Neil's interest grew stronger toward the sound of Rock music, his trumpet began to collect dust. From these two events, one of the biggest moments in Neil's life transpired. After nagging his parents for quite a few years to let him go and buy a guitar, Neil finally took a trip to the local music store at the age of 16 and traded in his trumpet toward the value of his first guitar. From here, Neil had a new found passion.
Aside from the good ol' Rock & Roll, Neil's musical appetite diversified over time toward other specific styles such as Progressive Rock, Metal, Blues, Funk, Soul, Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Latin Jazz, Flamenco, and Classical. Primarily a self-taught guitarist, Neil's music discipline has been honed greatly from his intense self-study of both music theory and the guitar techniques found in these styles. He jointly developed his understanding of music theory from the classical standpoint in the School of Music at William Paterson University where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Music in 1999. As part of his studies, Neil's degree program also included a concentration in audio recording, which Neil maintained a parallel interest in throughout.
Never taking a private guitar lesson a day in his life, Neil did however, have the opportunity (in the midst of his college years) to spend a week in a classroom with a handful of other guitarists in the presence of the extraordinary Fusion player Jon Finn, where Neil attended the Summer Guitar Sessions at Berklee College of Music in 1997. It was around this time that Neil's ear truly began opening up to alternate playing styles more so than in the past.
Though
Neil
decidedly
never
became
a
performance
major
for
guitar
in
his
college
studies,
he
maintained
his
self-studies
and
became
part
of
the
Classical
Guitar
Ensemble
in
his
senior
year
at
William Paterson. He
also
honed
his
songwriting
craft
producing
some
of
his
first
complete
solo
recordings
during
this
time,
discovering
his
true
passion
for
creating
instrumental
music
using
his
guitar
as
the
"voice"
of
his songs. Neil
also
spent
time
during
college
honing
his
musical
creativity
with
peers
among
the
local
scene
in
various
band
projects
ranging
from
Progressive
Rock
to
Funk.
While constantly composing and developing his own musical works, Neil also managed to continue with his interest in music production, earning his way up the ladder in the New York area as a recording engineer. Eventually, Neil landed a job at Sony Music Studios in Manhattan working alongside some of the biggest names in the business. By this time, Neil's studio experiences already included sessions with artists such as Marc Anthony, Harry Connick Jr., Eve, Pat Metheny, Irene Reid, the late Charles Earland, producer Bob Power (A Tribe Called Quest, Erykah Badu) and many others. It was at Sony that after spending only a few months Neil succeeded greatly in production, but he wanted more... With his incredibly intense engineering schedule, he missed too much -- the joy of being an artist himself. It was at this time that Neil decided to channel his energy into his career as a solo artist and session guitarist while still freelance engineering, along with starting to work as a producer for other artists, continuing to teach guitar lessons (which he began during college), and somehow maintaining extra jobs including working at a music store and later becoming a studio manager at a local music rehearsal facility -- all to support himself. It is this character that has brought Neil where he is today...
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