David Fiuczynski

Who is David Fiuczynski?

David "Fuze" Fiuczynski is an American guitarist, 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.

Though born in the United States, his family moved to Germany when he was 8 years old and remained until he was 19. He returned to the US to study at Hampshire College and later the prestigious New England Conservatory. He received a Bachelors of Music from the latter in 1989. After living in New York City for more than a decade, he now resides in Massachusetts and is a full-time professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

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.