Pasquale Grasso Wins the Wes Montgomery Jazz Guitar Competition

The winner of the 2015 Wes Montgomery International Jazz Guitar Competition has been announced and it is New York guitarist Pasquale Grasso. Second place went to Roland Balogh of Budapest Hungary and third place to Michael Valenu of New New York.  You can see all the finalists video submissions here.

In the video above, Pasquale is playing Just One of Those Things with Pat Bianchi on B3 and Carmen Intoree on drums (you can hear this backup group behind Pat Martino at the 2014 Lotos Jazz Festival here). This song, played a break-neck speed, is a good demonstration of Pasquale's facility and approach to playing.

Now that you've seen the winner and the finalists, would you think about entering next year's competition? In future posts I'll present what I think would be an interesting strategy to pursue for any young guitarist that might be interested.