Anthony Pirog

Washington, D.C.-centered guitarist Anthony Pirog is certainly a musician who knows zero stylistic limits. Educated in jazz but enthusiastically embracing different forms from indie/punk-informed rock and roll to ambient experimentation, Pirog provides emerged among the many noteworthy artists for the 21st hundred years D.C. region music picture, defying predictability with live performances in myriad configurations, from single experimental models to his genre-defying duo with cellist (and wife) Janel Leppin, the hard-charging instrumental rock and roll quartet New Electrical, the proggy substitute rock and roll trio Skysaw offering previous Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and vocalist/songwriter Mike Reina, and his avant jazz trio with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Ches Smith. Pirog also led a efficiency of Terry Riley’s landmark minimalist structure “In C,” offering an ensemble of 22 music artists, at D.C.’s Sonic Circuits experimental music celebration in 2011. It’s secure to state that no-one knows just what to anticipate from Pirog, which fact by itself might make him noteworthy, but it is also useful that he uses technology with unusual intelligence, is led with a surefooted creative conception in each of his tasks, and happens to obtain killer chops. Pirog was created in Lewisburg, Pa, with child years years spent in Maryland and California before his family members relocated to Vienna, Virginia, simply outside Washington, D.C., when he was nine years of age. Anthony’s dad — a previous electric guitarist within a surf-style music group — performed a key function in his son’s burgeoning musical curiosity; younger Pirog liked hearing his father’s record collection (from Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Youngster Williamson to doo wop and, obviously, browse), and first started learning electric guitar (beginning at age 11 with Roy Orbison’s “Quite Woman”) on the 1963 Fender Jaguar that his dad decided to share with him. Through the 1990s, Pirog went to the same senior high school as Janel Leppin — although they wouldn’t start performing together being a duo until 2005 — and performed in myriad rings, his interests shifting inexorably toward avant jazz and experimental music. Pirog’s decision to go after a profession in music came with a scholarship or grant to wait a summer program at Boston’s exclusive Berklee University of Music, where he later on enrolled like a full-time college student upon graduation from senior high school. Pirog analyzed jazz acoustic guitar at Berklee for just two years before completing a qualification in jazz overall performance at N.Con.U. in 2004. He’d go back to the D.C. region half a year after graduating, however, not before he previously assimilated all he could from your N.Con.C. club picture — attending displays at Tonic as well as the Town Vanguard by famous brands Expenses Frisell, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Marc Ribot — to product what he previously discovered through his formal music education. The guitarist lost no time for making an impression back again on his house turf of D.C. and environs. No musical design appeared to be off-limits for him, as Pirog could possibly be found playing membership gigs with groupings (so that as a single artist) working the gamut from rockabilly, indie rock and roll, and avant folk to innovative jazz, fusion, and free of charge improvisation to electronica and experimental ambient. He performed numerous annual displays at Sonic Circuits, like the above mentioned 2011 efficiency of “In C,” and became known for his mastery of digital remedies and looping, filling up the stage with over 20 pedals at the same time. On record, Pirog produced one of is own first performances as an associate of the weighty indie-meets-Crimson instrumental quartet New Electric powered around the group’s eponymous EP released from the Perpetual Movement Machine in 2005; in the mean time, the guitarist became a member of up with Leppin to create the ambient-folk-classical-experimental-etc. duo Janel & Anthony and in addition formed his personal label, Sonic Mass Information, which issued Starting to End, his single debut of live improvisations which range from pastoral acoustic to jarring prepared noise, in ’09 2009. Janel & Anthony songs seems on numerous compilations released from the Zeromoon (“smart noise music from the nonentertainment genre”) label through 2010, and Pirog produced his 1st appearance being a bandleader on the present day creative and free of charge jazz-noise-ambient-etc. discharge Trio/Sextet, released via limited-edition vinyl fabric and digital download by Sonic Mass in 2011. In another of his most noticeable (and straight-ahead poppy) efforts, Pirog was asked to become listed on Jimmy Chamberlin and Mike Reina’s prog-influenced alt-rock trio Skysaw, showing up on Great Civilizations, the group’s 2011 debut record released by Dangerbird Information. As the 2010s advanced, Pirog captured the interest from the D.C. region label Cuneiform Information (located in Sterling silver Springs, Maryland), which would shortly supply the guitarist his widest publicity yet being a head or collaborator in avant music circles. Janel & Anthony’s Cuneiform debut, Where Is certainly Home, received significant critical interest upon its launch in 2012, and Pirog produced his personal label debut using the launch of Palo Colorado Desire in 2014. Co-produced by Pirog and Reina, the recording featured the first choice on acoustic guitar and electronics inside a trio establishing with avant jazz and innovative improvised music stalwarts acoustic bassist Michael Formanek (Tim Berne’s Bloodcount, Thumbscrew) and drummer Ches Smith (Tim Berne, Tag Ribot, Trevor Dunn).