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Biography
Anthony Bianco is a drummer, percussionist and composer born in New York City, the son of a drummer and the grandson of a guitar player. Growing up in New York City he could experience the greatest sounds in jazz. He remembered seeing Elvin, Mingus, Art Blakey, Woody Shaw, Miles, Liebman, Tony Williams, Dexter Gordon, Ron Carter. This intensified his love for this music.
He got a steady gig in New York City in a warm-up band in a famous comedy club called Catch a Rising Star. It’s a legendary comic club that a lot of the great comedians came through (Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Richard Belzer). The bass player on the gig was Lloyd Mair. He was a devotee of avant garde music and jazz. He knew some really interesting things about jazz. Tony learned a lot from him. Being at this club Tony played in interesting situations with Edgar Winter, Pat Benatar. In that time Tony explored his own ideas and met a lot of musicians. One became a close friend : tenor player Mac Goldsberry. Mac introduced Tony to a lot of the New York City players even though he was from Texas. Through him Tony played and recorded with Ed Schuller, Herb Robertson and Charlie Elgart. He started to write music at that time and made a recording with John Hart on guitar. At the same time he hooked up with (through Goldsberry) the singer, writer, jazz musician and poet Bob Lennox and his son Adam. Through Adam he first met Dave Liebman. They did a record and gig doing progressive rock music. At this time he also did a recording with Anthony Jackson, the legendary electric bass player and started to play more free jazz. But things in New York for him weren’t really going well. Tony met some musicians from the University of Miami (Mike Gillis, legendary guitar player) and went to Japan for a few months with them. On coming back to the U.S. one of the teachers from the University invited Tony to come to Miami. Dave Liebmann suggests to Tony to move to Berlin where some of his mates went to live and play jazz (Lennox, Goldsberry). Liebman said that he needed to get out of NYC to see himself.
