Bianco started playing guitar --- a six-string Harmony Acoustic – at the age of thirteen. "I think I traded my cousin a couple of Beatle albums for it," he recalls. "It didn’t have all six strings on it, only four, so I strung the last two string with the yellow rubber cords from some Fisher Price pull toys." He played in bands throughout high school, attended the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston for two years, then hit the road with a disco outfit called the Blue Fox Band for five years.

      In 1988, the guitarist Michael Bianco found a copy of the seven-string Ibanez guitar designed by Steve Vai. The extra string (a low B for the curious) adds a depth and texture to his sound that isn’t duplicated elsewhere in these parts. Bianco combines finger-tapping, hammer-ons and hammer-offs, and a touch of slap bass (plus a few electronic sound effects, most noticeably delay and reverb) to create the sound the New Age crowd needs to survive. He tosses a bit of Hendrix and a bit of Thelonius Monk to keep the sound interesting. The Boston native spent a few years on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street before moving to South Florida seven years ago.

      Michael Bianco is no stranger to the South Florida music scene. Playing a custom built 7-string guitar, using a two handed tapping technique, Michael is able to produce a unique full range "harp-like" sound, while using no overdubs or prerecorded tapes.
Throughout the past ten years, Michael Bianco has been playing various venues in South Florida including: several Riverwalk Jazz brunches, Festival of the Arts, Las Olas street fairs, as well as countless Restaurants and Hotels.

                                       Virtual Reality

       If you think Stanley Jordan is the coolest thing in guitarists since sliced bread, rush out and buy this album. Like Jordan, South Florida based Michael Bianco utilizes the two-handed tapping technique, enabling him to play impossibly complex figures and lines. However Bianco avoids the problem Jordan had with his early work, in that he doesn’t hesitate to use effects to change the texture of the guitar sound. There’s also evidence here of more creativity and musical inventiveness in the songwriting than we saw with Jordan.
According to the liner notes, the album was recorded with no overdubs, so what you hear is what you get .If that’s true, musicians-and especially guitarists-will laud Bianco with critical raves for years to come.

By: Robert Archer

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