Alex Skolnick Trio

The Alex Skolnick Trio came together in New York City around 2001, born out of Alex Skolnick's studies at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. In 1998, Skolnick moved to New York City and began devoting all of his energy to jazz, enrolling at The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music, and graduated with a degree in jazz performance. Before jazz claimed him, Skolnick had already made his name in heavy metal, born in 1968 and raised in Berkeley, California, where a fascination with the rock group Kiss at age nine led to a desire to learn guitar. That path led him to become lead guitarist for the metal band Testament at age sixteen, whom he was with for seven years and five albums, touring the world with acts such as Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and others. At The New School, he found the collaborators who would become his trio, and the lineup settled as Alex Skolnick on guitar, Matt Zebroski on drums, and John Graham Davis on upright bass from 2001 to 2003. Early on, the group's defining concept arrived almost by accident: the three began practicing composition assignments and jazz standards, and frustrated with the limitations of the jazz repertoire, Alex stumbled upon the idea of arranging rock songs after hearing a Scorpions tune reimagined in a dream. The trio's breakthrough came with a bold concept that turned heads in both jazz and metal circles: reinventing hard rock and metal classics as sophisticated bebop. Their debut, "Goodbye To Romance: Standards For A New Generation," brought together the worlds of metal and traditional jazz in an unprecedented blend. By 2003, Nathan Peck replaced Davis on bass in the Alex Skolnick Trio, solidifying the lineup that would carry the group through its most celebrated years. Their second record, 2004's Transformation, featured radically reworked versions of tunes originally by bands such as Judas Priest, Pink Floyd, and Deep Purple. The band steadily built critical credibility, and since their debut, AST has been honored with 4 ½ stars by Downbeat, reviewed by Jazziz, The Village Voice and has charted on the JazzWeek radio charts. A turning point came with their fourth album, as the trio's fourth album, Veritas, reached the Top Ten of the iTunes jazz charts at no.7, positioned between Dave Brubeck and Esperanza Spalding, and is released via the esteemed jazz label, Palmetto Records. That record also marked a chart milestone, as Veritas spent a week at number 44 on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. The trio's career arc has been shaped by a rare balancing act between two musical worlds. Skolnick maintained his metal career alongside the jazz project, and he returned to Testament in 2005, continuing to record and tour with that band even as the trio kept evolving. Back with the Alex Skolnick Trio, 2007's Last Day in Paradise focused more on original compositions than earlier releases, as did 2011's Veritas. The group earned high-profile admirers and opportunities along the way, as the Alex Skolnick Trio was also the main support band on Rodrigo Y Gabriela's consecutive European and US tour in 2010, including five sold-out nights in London. Their reputation drew notable guests too, since Metallica's Robert Trujillo joined the band for an impromptu jam at Radio City Music Hall. The trio continued to tour widely, having performed at New York's Iridium Jazz Club, the Rochester International Jazz Festival, MusikMesse in Frankfurt, Germany, at the National Center for the Arts, Mexico City, and numerous other venues all over the world. In more recent years, the trio has continued to record and perform, returning to the label that helped define its peak years when the guitarist returned to Palmetto for the Alex Skolnick Trio LP Conundrum, released in September of 2018. Skolnick himself has remained a busy, in-demand musician across genres, described as having established himself in the realm of nuanced jazz fusion with the Alex Skolnick Trio, while maintaining a high profile outside of his metal group and his jazz trio, collaborating with acts including Ozzy Osbourne, Les Claypool, and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The Alex Skolnick Trio's lasting legacy rests on its singular achievement of making bebop and thrash metal feel like natural companions, a concept that continues to surprise and win over audiences from jazz clubs to rock festivals decades after its founding.