Jimmy Katz Jimmy Bruno on the cover of his latest CD, "Solo," which he recorded in his home studio in South Philadelphia. Click photo for larger image.

When it comes to winning friends and influencing people, Jimmy Bruno wasn't playing by the book when he was asked by a magazine writer what he thought of jazz guitar programs at universities.

"I said something to the effect of, 'Well I've been around to a few places, and from what I've seen, there isn't a good guitar department anywhere.' Which was a really dumb thing to say, OK? And I'm not denying that I said it, but the way it got printed, it sounded worse than it was. So I got some hate mail from a couple of guitar schools.

"But I got a thing from Bill Purse, who runs the guitar department at Duquesne University, and he said, 'Come and see our guitar department.' And so I did."

It was, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Bruno, a jazz guitarist held in such esteem that he has instruments and even a brand of guitar strings made with his name on them, has been a performer and teacher at Duquesne's Summer Guitar & Bass workshop almost every year for the past decade. Purse calls him "one of the best guitarists -- you know, in the Top 10" as well as "the Joe Pesci of the guitar" who says "whatever's at the top of his head, whatever comes out."

Bruno returns to the workshop this week in a series of events, including a "Summertime Blues" concert Wednesday at 7 p.m., where he'll perform with another internationally known jazz guitarist, Howard Alden, among others.

Bruno favors a burning, straight-ahead bebop style of jazz guitar without any overt electronic effects. Nevertheless, it turns out that cutting-edge digital technology plays a role in both his music and the marketing of his music. Which makes him a good fit for Duquesne, where music students are encouraged to study bits and bytes as well as sharps and flats.

"Their music technology department is by far the best one that I've ever seen," Bruno says, on the phone from his home in South Philadelphia.

	Summer Guitar & Bass Workshop concerts Tonight, 7:30, Pappert School of Music Guitar Society of Fine Art Concert: Diane Ponzio, Tim Bedner, Tom Kikta, John Maione, RJ Zimmerman Admission: $10 Jazz Society, GSFA, WDUQ members: $8 Student ID: $6 Information: 412-396-4939 Tomorrow, 7:30 p.m., Pappert School of Music Lifetime Achievement Award Concert: Tony Janflone Jr., Seymour Duncan, Steve Dudas, Steve Trovato (Duncan and Dudas will receive awards.) Admission: $10 at the door Jazz Society, GSFA, WDUQ members: $8 Student ID: $6 Information: 412-396-4939 Wednesday, 7 p.m., outside the Duquesne Student Union Summertime Blues Concert: Howard Alden, Jimmy Bruno, Joe Negri, Ken Karsh, Amanda Ford Donation requested: Information: 412-396-6209.

"To me, that's a big plus, because to make it in this business is so difficult, and the focus is so much on music technology right now, so anybody that is going to come out of a music school and hope to make a living, you gotta be familiar with this stuff. It's one thing to be a great player, but, you know, how many virtuosos are there going to be?

"I'm lucky enough to make a really good living touring and playing concerts and teaching. But I use this technology, the computer, in my teaching, and the last [two] CDs I recorded, I recorded myself on a Mac computer. I use Finale [music notation software] a lot for all the charts.

"I recently did something in a Hilary Duff movie where somebody turns a radio on, and they needed to have a certain kind of music playing. It's like 15 seconds. It was MIDI [a system that stores and communicates pitches and timbres as numbers], and I recorded the MIDI, turned it into audio, and sent the audio file to the guy.

"He called me on Friday. They needed it by Monday. And they had it. Now that's not my forte, that's not something that I do every day, but that would be a really viable way to make a living as a composer, as a musician, and it's very lucrative. So again, everything that I do nowadays involves the computer. Everything. Even marketing myself."

For example, at Bruno's Web site, two of his instruction books can be downloaded for a fee. His instructional videos will soon be available for download, he says, as well as "Solo," his latest recording.

Now 52, Bruno has been around long enough to see several sea changes in the music business. His father was a jazz guitarist, and his mother was a singer.

"I would go sit in wherever my mother and father were playing. I was able to play pretty good when I was 12."

Good enough, in fact, to perform on the nationally broadcast "Ted Mack Amateur Hour."

"It was kind of like 'American Idol' now, but more toned down. I don't think you won anything. I think you got to go back. I won three times, and that was it. You couldn't win any more."

In the '80s, Bruno lived in Las Vegas, where he enjoyed success as a musician-for-hire. He backed The Osmonds on their TV show for about a year.

"Those were just really good-paying studio gigs. I used to fly up to Provo, Utah, in the daytime, do maybe two or three shows, make like 16 hundred bucks and then fly back in time to play my gig at the Las Vegas Hilton at 8 o'clock. I was in the house band there. I would just play for whoever came in. Everybody from Liberace to Bill Cosby to Anthony Newley, Doc Severinsen, Lola Falana -- this is the '80s, you know."

Bruno then moved to L.A. to do TV and movie work, but he finally decided he wanted to forge a career playing the music he loved -- jazz. Concord Records signed him and released nine Bruno CDs, and the guitarist is currently "loaned out," as he puts it, to Mel Bay, the guitar publication company, which has released his latest CD, "Solo."

Performing live, Bruno plays a mix of guitar-enthusiast and teaching-oriented events like the First World Guitar Congress and the Duquesne workshop, as well as concerts for the general public.

For a time, Bruno was playing the seven-string guitar, an instrument favored by George Van Eps, Bucky Pizzarelli and others who value the instrument's deep bass, especially for playing solo. But for the last two years, he's been back to the six -- specifically, the Jimmy Bruno Model designed by Roger Sadowsky.

He needed to play the six-string to test what designers came up with and, of course, to promote the guitar.

"But in the course of all that," he adds, "I didn't miss the couple extra notes. In a way I was like, 'Wow, this is like coming home again.' This is what I learned on, and it just felt right.

"I wound up doing a whole solo record on the six-string, and I was happy with it. Joe Pass did it. Martin Taylor. I mean Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson didn't need to add any more keys down at the left end of the piano. There's a piano, you play it. Here's a guitar, it's six strings, and you play it."