Dave Fiuczynski

David "Fuze" Fiuczynski, guitarist, is 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. Born in the United States, his family moved to Germany when he was 8 years old and remained there until he was 19. He returned to the US to study at Hampshire College and later at the New England Conservatory. Though generally thought of as a jazz musician, David Fiuczynski describes himself as "a jazz-musician who doesn't want to play just jazz". Many of his albums have thematic material that ties them to one or more additional genres. Screaming Headless Torsos, for instance, emphasizes a jazz-funk fusion, while Hasidic New Wave blends jazz with Semitic and African music; 2000's JazzPunk is a recording of standards and covers written by his idols and mentors, in which each tune was reworked in distinctive musical combinations. In 2005, Fiuczynski was hired by former Police drummer Stewart Copeland for his side project Gizmo, which toured in Italy in July 2005. Starting in 2007, he's toured with trumpeter Cuong Vu and with jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, and also appeared on the latter's albums Time Control and Beyond Standard. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.