Vince Giordano

Vince Giordano (born March 11, 1952 in Brooklyn) is an American saxophonist and leader of the New York-based Nighthawks Orchestra. He specializes in jazz of the 1920s and 1930s and his primary instrument is the bass saxophone. Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks have played on television and film soundtracks, including the HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Woody Allen's musical comedy film Everyone Says I Love You.
Music career
When he was five, Giordano listened to music of the 1920s on a wind-up Victrola. When he was 15, he played string bass and bass saxophone professionally and took lessons from Bill Challis to learn about writing arrangements like the dance bands of the 1920s and 30s. He performed with New Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Band, he New York Jazz Repertory Company, and Leon Redbone. He plays bass saxophone, string bass and tuba with his band, The Nighthawks, which plays music from the early days of jazz, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.
Lending his musical and acting talents to Francis Ford Coppola's film The Cotton Club led to working with Dick Hyman's Orchestra in half a dozen Woody Allen soundtracks, then acting as bass player, most notably in Sean Penn's band in Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. Giordano and the Nighthawks have appeared on soundtracks for the movies The Aviator, Finding Forrester, The Good Shepherd, and Public Enemies, the HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce, and the HBO series Boardwalk Empire.
Collecting
Giordano is a music historian and collector with more than 60,000 scores in his collection. He is listed as "a friend of Thornton Hagert and the Vernacular Music Research's archive of music" in The Devil's Horn: The Story of the Saxophone by Michael Segall (2006). In 2011, he was featured in the PBS series Michael Feinstein's American Songbook, in which he reveals his treasures from the Great American Songbook. His collection includes big band arrangements, silent movie scores, 78-rpm discs, piano rolls, and a Victrola.
Performing
Giordano and his band have been guests on Garrison Keillor's variety radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Turner Classic Movie Film Festival spotlighted him at Hollywood's Music Box, where the band performed vintage movie music, in addition to accompanying The Cameraman, a Buster Keaton silent film shown at the Egyptian Theater. In the summer of 2012, the band performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, Music Mountain, and the Litchfield Jazz Festival. In 2016 a feature-length documentary, "There's a Future in the Past", about Giordano and his band was released.
Awards and honors
Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, Boardwalk Empire Volume 1: Music from the HBO Original Series, 2012
Selected discography
Quality Shout (Stomp Off, 1993)
The Goldkette Project (Circle, 1994)
Music of the Cotton Club Revisited (Nighthawk, 2001)
Remembering Louis (Jump, 2002)
Cheek to Cheek (Nighthawk, 2003)
Moonlight Serenade – Big Band Hits of the 1930s & '40s (Nighthawk, 2006)
Top Hat, White Tie & Tails
Soundtrack appearances
1994 Baseball: The American Epic
1997 Everyone Says I Love You
2001 Ghost World (film)
2004 The Aviator
2006 George M. Cohan Tonight!
2007 The Good Shepherd
2011 Mildred Pierce: Music from the HBO Miniseries
2011 Boardwalk Empire Volume 1: Music from the HBO Original Series
2013 Boardwalk Empire Volume 2: Music from the HBO Original Series
2014 Boardwalk Empire Volume 3: Music from the HBO Original Series
2015 Bessie: Music from the HBO Film
2016 Cafe Society
With Leon Redbone
1978 Champagne Charlie
1981 From Branch to Branch
1985 Red to Blue
1991 Sugar
1992 Up a Lazy River
1994 Whistling in the Wind
2001 Any Time
With Marty Grosz
1996 The Rhythm for Sale
2002 Remembering Louis
2005 Chasin' the Spots
2006 Marty Grosz and His Hot Combination
2009 Hot Winds: The Classic Sessions
2012 The James P. Johnson Songbook
With Back Bay Ramblers
1994 My Mamma's in Town!
2001 Cuttin' Up
2003 Red Hot Band
With others
1986 Chicago Jazz Summit, Chicago Jazz Summit
1990 Get Yourself a New Broom (and Sweep Those Blues Away), Guy Van Duser
1993 Jelly's Last Jam, Silver Leaf Jazz Band
1994 Jazz Hot Ensemble, Jazz Hot Ensemble
1994 The Keith Ingham New York 9, Vol. 1, Keith Ingham
1994 The Keith Ingham New York 9, Vol. 2, Keith Ingham
1997 Play the Music of Jelly Roll Morton, New Jazz Wizards
2001 Sweet & Lowdown, Dave Van Ronk
2001 Deep Night, Barbara Rosene
2002 Things Are Looking Up, Paul Bacon
2003 Black Manhattan: Theater and Dance Music of James Rick Benjamin, The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra
2003 Celebrating Bix!, Bix Beiderbecke Centennial All Stars
2003 Stormy Weather: The Music of Harold Arlen
2004 Doin' Things, Andy Stein
2004 If Bix Played Gershwin, Dick Hyman
2004 It's De Lovely - The Authentic Cole Porter Collection, Cole Porter
2006 Guess Who's in Town, Daryl Sherman
2007 Lower Register: Bobby Gordon Plays Joe Marsala, Bobby Gordon
2009 If It Wasn't for the Irish and the Jews, Mick Moloney
2009 Together, Lew Green/Joe Muranyi
2020 I'd Rather Lead A Band, Loudon Wainwright III
See also
List of jazz arrangers
References
External links
Official website
Interview at NPR
Review in Show Business Weekly
1952 births
Living people
American people of Italian descent
American jazz saxophonists
American male saxophonists
American jazz bandleaders
American music arrangers
21st-century American saxophonists
21st-century American male musicians
American male jazz musicians