The Guitar Player's Resource
Drawing on each band member's musical and cultural background, Arizona-based Turning Point forged an eclectic sound that mixes progressive jazz with rock, R&B and blues (with touches of Greek music), and - paying homage to their home in the Southwest - Latin jazz. Guitarist Thano Sahnas is a superb musician who infuses the music on their latest instrumental CD, Matador, with the same energy and skill as Russ Freeman does with his band, The Rippingtons. While not an end-to-end guitar recording (guest performer, sax man Dominic Amato. carries a lot of the melodies), Sahnas injects a variety of axes into numbers such as "Spain" (acoustic) and the title track (electric) in a way that will leave guitar fans pleased. And if the trippy, electro-fusion, funk opener "Lickety Split" doesn't get you going, you must be dead. Highly recommended. Turning Point were originally profiled in the December-January, 2005 edition of The Undiscovered.
The four members of Turning Point - Thano Sahnas (guitar), his brother Demitri Sahnas (acoustic and fretless bass), keyboardist Steve Culp and drummer/percussionist John Herrera--faced a lot of flak in their early years for creating a genre practically unto themselves defying music industry convention. This initial resistance inspired them to push the envelope even further, and the payoff with audiences has been phenomenal. Turning Point has received acclaim for all of its previous releases, beginning with a self titled debut in 1995 and including A Cool Jazzy Christmas (1996), Together (1998), Bridges (1999) and A Thousand Stories (2000), which was produced by famed bassist Brian Bromberg and released nationally by A440 Music. Together earned the band its largest national audience, receiving airplay on more than 40 smooth jazz stations.
Aside from playing venues and doing TV and charity functions all over Arizona, the band has played in Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Fresno (the River Bend Jazz Festival), L.A.'s Baked Potato and Humphrey's in San Diego. Turning Point also performed in March of 2000 at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium (the original site of the Grand Ole Opry) for a cable TV show called Music Makers.
Native Language Music, Inc.
United States
Web site: www.tpband.com