Promo blurb for booking:

A fingerpicking guitarist leads acoustic string duos/trios in several lineups with award-winning guest soloists on violin/fiddle and bass. Blending fingerstyle guitar syncopated rhythms with bowed lead lines and boy/girl vocal harmonies, these players combine traditional forms -- blues, folk, celtic – with a pinch of classical, jazz, and bluegrass, serving up a genre-busting acoustic sound long on musicianship and the natural flavors of wood and steel. Their eclectic playlist runs the gamut from British folk to Americana country gospel blues to celtic fiddle tunes.   

 Since May '09 The Jon Rubin Group has performed steadily from Monterey to San Francisco, earning return invites just about everywhere and gaining the marquee (twice) of nationally-renowned S.F. venue Biscuits&Blues.  

"Great guitar, great fiddle and a voice that bring Traditional Music to life." – David Stafford, KKUP Friday Folk-Off http://www.kkup.com/ 

 “a f***ing brilliant guitar player” – Ted Silverman, N. Calif. Bluegrass Society 2010 Award Nominee 

"great show! I'm loving this trio, you guys are an awesome group together...skilled, controlled, thoughtful performance" -- John Mount, videographer http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnEMount

"technically tight and risk-taking" -- Monterey County Weekly 

"Excellent! Man I dig that slick jazz style mixed with the 'frailing' style chop. Most of all though, I am really impressed with your singing...the harmonies with the young lady...cool" -- Philip Ball, guitarist

"My wife as well as my friend and I really enjoyed your music last night, and felt very blessed to have been at your performance with Shannon. Her voice is heavenly...and harmonizes beautifully with yours" -- Glenn C., audience member

"Yes, yes, yes, amazing show..these guys had a great sound. Would love to see them again when they come to the East Coast, or when I get back out west!" -- Gina D., audience member

 For more, see the About and Media pages at http://www.jr-guitar.com/ 

  from Monterey County Weekly, March 2010

  "The musical fusion force of the Jon Rubin Group teams up with MPC orchestra violist Deanna Lynn tonight in an expression of pure musical freedom. Bouncing from classically tinged Celtic fiddle tunes to British folk to Americana country gospel, all served up with a hint of jazz and a dash of blues, the group knows no bounds in their attempt at creating an uplifting musical experience."

 

  "Jon Rubin’s inspiration and love for the acoustic guitar comes from former Hot Tuna and Jefferson Airplane member, Jorma Kaukonen. But it wasn’t the music of the psychedelic era that touched Rubin; it was Kaukonen’s gospel blues and country finger picking style on Hot Tuna’s first acoustic album, live at New Orleans House in Berkeley in 1970. Deanna Lynn, a 20-year-old Monterey High graduate and one of Monterey County’s best young violinists, will accompany Rubin..." 

   from Monterey County Herald 'Best Bets', April 1, 2010

 "Composed of a classical violist, jazz violinist, acoustic blues guitarist and world music bassist, Jon Rubin Group blends all of those musical disciplines to form an original acoustic fusion that has earned them a solid reputation from the Peninsula to San Francisco. Featured guest soloist Deanna Lynn has performed in the Carmel Bach Festival's youth artist concert twice and won the 2007 Youth Music Monterey's concerto competition." 

 

 

from ‘In Their Own Words’ SF Local Music interviews series by Ted Ramey in Examiner.com 12-23-09

 http://www.examiner.com/x-8882-SF-Local-Music-Examiner~y2009m12d23-In-their-own-words-Jon-Rubin

 

  Q: What are your musical goals or aspirations?  

 A: This one's easy...just to be 'playing out' regularly in front of an appreciative audience, and performing with tremendously talented musicians. Since I'm returning to performance music after working most of my life at a non-musical career, where playing guitar was almost entirely a solitary experience, it's a thrill for me now to be playing with these great musicians and getting that feeling from a live audience. Still, somewhere included in there is a sense of sharing our repertoire of these great but relatively obscure traditional/roots tunes with a new audience, while finding a truly original musical 'voice' with my collaborators in expressing that sound. So maybe some ambitious aspirations after all...

 

  Q: What is your musical history? 

A: I've played guitar all of my adult life, and at one point early on it was really the only thing I wanted to do (or could do). My mentor was Alan Mann, an authentic rock-and-roll/folk troubadour in Phila. in the 70's (who sadly died way too young). He encouraged my earliest attempts at writing and performing, and I opened for him on a few occasions as a solo acoustic singer/songwriter. But I was just strumming chords basically. It wasn't until later on that I got into flatpicking, and eventually, fingerpicking and alternate tunings. That opened up a whole new world where solo guitar could be a virtuoso instrument, not just accompaniment to singing or songwriting. And I found that working out an original fingerpicking arrangement of a traditional piece could be as creative as songwriting. So now the final piece of the puzzle has been to weave that fingerstyle playing -- which can be like having the whole band in your right hand -- into ensemble playing, where sometimes 'less is more' and I don't have to always keep the bass going with my thumb or provide the melody line on top. And believe me, learning NOT to automatically play that alternating bass line requires a big leap for a solo guitarist!

  Q: Who or what are your influences and inspirations?  

 

A: Jorma Kaukonen. I was totally enthralled by his playing on the first acoustic Hot Tuna album (recorded at New Orleans House in Berkeley in 1970). It was authentic Rev. Gary Davis country blues, with that rhythmic, syncopated fingerpicking and gospel choir-influenced intervals, but fused with folk, rock…all sounds that were coming together at that time. Then there is this whole 'school of British acoustic folk/blues guitar' from the sixties, guys like Bert Jansch, who had so much influence on Jimmy Page. I spent a week with Martin Simpson in a workshop and he inspired a lot of what you hear in my playing now. Yet another bloody brilliant Brit who is a secret outside of the UK, but has provided me a huge recent dose of re-inspiration for guitar playing: Nic Jones.

Q: Where have you played?  

 A: Apart from South St., Phila., you mean? Since last May we/I (still play the rare solo gig) have been playing just about every week from Monterey to SF, including a kind of 'acoustic circuit' which I think of as East Village Monterey, Cava Capitola, Bocci's Cellar Santa Cruz, Caffe Trieste San Jose....we've played these all many times. But our prestige gigs have been The Union Room (Upstairs@Biscuits&Blues) in SF and Red Rock Cafe in Mountain View.

 


  Q: Anything else you want the reader to know?   

 A: I refer to our group as an ‘acoustic power trio’ of bass, violin/viola and guitar, and am totally thrilled to be playing with my virtuoso bandmates.  Check out their bios on the About page of our website. And we're playing our 2010 SF shows with Grammy award-winning violinist Cal Keaoola, who is an inspirational musician in his own right.

 

from The Monterey Herald 10/30/2009, by Dennis Taylor

"There is an understanding, centuries old, among practitioners and aficionados of the classical music genre: The pieces were composed to be performed just so. The greatest musicians bring their own, subtle interpretations, of course; but one doesn't rewrite Beethoven, Bach or Mozart. 

The quest to fit into that world has been exhilarating, frustrating, overwhelming and sometimes intimidating to Prunedale resident Deanna Lynn, one of Monterey County's best young violinists. 

"Whenever you're on stage playing a classical piece, you're very aware that there are a lot of people out there who have an idea of how it's supposed to sound," says the 19-year-old Monterey High graduate. "If you're not in tune, it's not good. If you're not in time, it's not good. If you don't have good sound, it's not good. There's a lot of pressure that way, no matter how talented you are." 

The pressure dissipates when Deanna assumes her newfound alter ego as an improvisational musician, playing her viola in Central Coast nightclubs -- nonschool nights for the Monterey Peninsula College student -- alongside guitarist Jon Rubin.   

They've been together as The Jon Rubin Group for only a short time, and continue to grow as a trio, blending their passions for blues, rock, folk, Celtic, bluegrass and classical into an evolving sound. (They'll play Nov. 6, 8 p.m., at East Village in downtown Monterey, and Dec. 5, 7:30 p.m., at The Works in Pacific Grove). For Lynn, that's a brand-new kind of fun.  

"Improvisational music is really different for me after so many years of classical training, but I'm finding out that it comes very naturally," she says. "I've been blessed with a very good ear -- I have almost perfect pitch with certain instruments -- so Jon doesn't even have to tell me the chords he's playing when we're onstage together. I can just tell the key. So we'll sometimes play a song during a gig that I've never heard before, and it sounds good, almost as if we had  practiced it a whole bunch."   

Her classical training, which began at an early age, has given Lynn a tempestuous relationship with the concept of practice, a four-hours-a-day commitment for a serious musician. 

"I did that for a while, but it was hard," she admits. "You can't practice for four hours straight, so I was trying to do it for an hour at a time. I found that I'd lose concentration after about 40 minutes and I'd just be pushing my way through it. I'd get mentally, physically and emotionally tired. So now I only practice for 30 minutes at a time." The proper way to practice, she says, is slowly, beginning each time with scales, and working to correct each and every flaw immediately, before moving  on. She enjoys the process, but it's sometimes a tedious labor of love. 

Lynn's plan after high school was to devote a full year to practice, then audition at Juliard or Manhattan School of Music, the pinnacle of music education. But her commitment as an 18-year-old proved less than intense. "And I got depressed," she says. "It was like, 'I'm not going to put in all this work before I'm sure this is what I really want to do.'" 

Her private violin instructor, Rochelle Walton of Pebble Beach, sees Lynn as "very talented, very bright, with all kinds of potential. "She has the emotional understanding necessary to play a wide range of classical music, and you don't find somebody like that standing on every street corner," says Walton, a former assistant to the celebrated Ivan Galamian. "But if you're going to make a commitment to the music, you'd better do it before you're 19. That's too late." 

Lynn also isn't sold on improvisational music as her true path, but Rubin, who met her in 2008 at a Monterey Peninsula Academy of Music bluegrass class, says she's a natural. "We started jamming together during a performance at the Alvarado Street farmers market, and it just felt really good," says Rubin, a former software engineer. "It was one of the first experiences I'd ever had playing alongside another instrument, other than the guitar, and it was really happening for me."  

She reacted with creative viola lines to everything he threw her way, Rubin says -- rock, blues, or anything else. He pitched the idea of forming a trio, along with bassist Chris Will. 

"I'm not exactly sure where it's going to take me. Improvisational music has become very important in my life. It makes me feel good to perform and share my music with people," Lynn says. "But it's also important to me to continue with the classical practice. "The improv is fun, but I actually like classical better. It's just extremely beautiful," she says. "Playing the fifth movement of Bach's D-minor Partida (Chaccone I) has given me the most intense and beautiful moments I've ever experienced." 

More information about the Jon Rubin Group, including a schedule of their gigs, can be found online at http://www.jr-guitar.com' 

 Dennis Taylor can be reached at dtaylor@montereyherald.com
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