Vince Giordano: Keeper of the Jazz Age Flame

Vince Giordano’s life has been dedicated to the performance and preservation of the music of the 1920s and ’30s. He has been described as “a poet of the jazz repertory frozen by time . . . The authenticity of the music couple with his first-hand knowledge of the original material provides him with insights, experiences and an integrity that is unique in the musical world.” No one else has been willing to make the commitment to assemble the world’s largest library of vintage orchestrations and then gather—and, in some cases, train—the best players in New York City to master the vintage tunes that once were the country’s most listened-to music. To which one critic wrote, “This isn’t nostalgic music-making; It’s every bit as alive and vital and ‘in-your-face’ as it was to the young men and women who played it and shamelessly and sensually shimmied to it to shake all their blues away.” Brooklyn Native A native of Flatbush, Giordano grew up on Long Island and got hooked on early jazz when at the age of five, he discovered a stack of 78 rpm records in his grandmother’s attic. The violin was his first instrument, but he switched to the tuba in the seventh grade and then added the string bass and bass sax. He joined the Musicians Union at 14, became a working musician at 15 playing with local Dixieland bands, and joined the 22-member Navy Show Band after he