1964-03-05

David Fiuczynski (born March 5, 1964) is an American contemporary jazz guitarist, best known as the leader of the Screaming Headless Torsos and David Fiuczynski's KiF, and as a member of Hasidic New Wave. He has played on more than 95 albums as a session musician, band leader, or band member. Though born in the United States, his family moved to Germany when he was 8 years old and remained until he was 19. He returned to the US to study at Hampshire College and later the prestigious New England Conservatory. He received a Bachelor of Music from the latter in 1989. After living in New York City for more than a decade, he now resides in Massachusetts and is a professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Fiuczynski describes himself as "a jazz musician who doesn't want to play just jazz." Many of his albums have thematic material associated with one or more additional genres. For example, Screaming Headless Torsos emphasizes jazz-funk fusion; and Hasidic New Wave blends jazz with Semitic and African music. His album Jazz Punk is a collection of standards and covers written by his idols and mentors where each tune was reworked in distinctive musical combinations. In 2005, Fiuczynski was hired by former Police drummer Stewart Copeland for the band Gizmo, which toured in Italy in July 2005. Starting in 2007, he has toured with trumpeter Cuong Vu and with jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, and appeared on the latter's albums Time Control and Beyond Standard. In 2012 he started Planet MicroJam, an institute exploring the use of microtones in jazz, ethnic folk and other contexts. Fiuczynski is the guitarist on the 2013 album Gamak by alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa.