About Frank Villafranca
Frank Villafranca was born in Buffalo,
New York in 1956. He was the first to study music in his family other than his
father, Joseph J. Villafranca who studied saxophone in high school and partly
while serving in the army in World War II. Frank began study later than usual
and began lessons at age 14 in 9th grade in high school.
He attended Berklee College Of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts finishing his studies in 1979 to pursue work in a local and popular band “Sunshyne” from
1979 to 1984 when he made the trip to Los Angeles. He met Andy in 1984 and
together, they performed in a few different bands until Andrew began his
publishing company. Andrew and Frank continued working together over the
years and Frank now has three books with Andrew which are published by
A.D.G. Productions.
In addition to “The Super Groovers” Frank currently works with the “San Gabriel
Seven”. Performing with SGS, Frank has had the pleasure and incredible
experience of working with some of Los Angeles’s greatest musicians such as
Bill Watrous, Pete Christlieb and Eric Marienthal.
Frank plays Selmer Mark VI alto and tenor saxophones, both low 100,000
series. His soprano sax is a curved Yanagisawa. He has played LaVoz reeds
since he began playing. Recently he has tried many different brands of reeds but
returned to LaVoz. His mouthpieces are all Beechler Metal Bellite, Tenor: #8
with medium soft Lavoz, Alto: #7 with medium LaVoz and Soprano: #6 with
medium LaVoz. Ligatures are all “Oleg” and he has also added several Oleg
pro sax enhancers on tenor and alto saxophone.
About Andrew D. Gordon
Andrew was born in London England and played all around England with different bands including the famed Marquee club. He moved to Los Angeles in 1979. For the first 10 years in LA, Andrew performed, toured and recorded with numerous musicians as well as teach 100's of piano/keybaord students. In 1991 Andrew started a music educational publishing company A.D.G. Productions that has now published over 100 instructional books for most types of instruments with Andrew having written over 30 of them. These books are sold in music stores throughout the world and has brought Andrew an immense sense of satisfaction to know that many music students and musicians are using ADG Productions book to further their music education.
Andrew is an exceptional all round experienced keyboard player as well as a guitarist, having played in a variety of musical situations throughout Europe, USA and Asia. Andrew has released two solo synthesizer albums, one of which received airplay on both Radio and TV world wide. The track "Walking The Lonely Streets' from his album "Silhouette" was used as background music for the soap opera "General Hospital for a few years. His experience has enabled him to compose, produce and arrange music for many artists, TV Shows, film, theater, commercials.
Andrew is also professor of music at Shepherd University in Los Angeles.
Andrew began his musical training at the age of 7, studying classical piano for 12 years. He has studied Synthesizer Programming at UCLA and was chosen to participate, by B.M.I., in their film scoring workshop, instructed by world renowned TV and film composer EARL HAGEN. Andrew also studied Jazz piano for 6 years with top jazz pianist MIKE GARSON.
Frank & Andrew's main influences include:
Herbie Hancock, David Sanborn, The Crusaders, Grover Washington, James Brown, The Beatles, Michael Brecker, Jimmy Smith, Santana, Booker T & the MG's, Sly Stone, Mike Garson, Jeff Beck, Miles Davis