Charlie Apicella was voted onto the 84th and 86th DownBeat Readers Poll for Guitar.

Charlie Apicella is the founder and Program Director of BLUES ALIVE: Ancestral Voices of the Blues. He is recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from NORTH JERSEY BLUES SOCIETY and serves on the Generation Blues education committee at THE BLUES FOUNDATION in Memphis, TN.

He has received numerous grants for his work preserving Ma Rainey‘s Legacy in collaboration with the Ma Rainey House Museum in Columbus, GA and the Library of Congress.

As a young guitarist he met his idol, B.B. King, who gave him critical advice and shared some stories. Apicella studied composition and improvisation with musical titans Yusef Lateef and Pat Martino and was trained as a historian by Archie Shepp and Billy Taylor.

He is a lecturer and curator for the Yusef Lateef Estate and has collaborated with Lincoln Center, Vanderbilt University, Williams College, and the Newport Jazz & Folk Festivals Foundation.

He has performed concerts and recorded with jazz legends Dave Holland, Sonny Fortune, John Blake, Jr., and Avery Sharpe and is guitarist for the Sonny Stitt Legacy Band. In 2022, he formed The Griots Speak with bassist William Parker, saxophonist Daniel Carter, and percussionist Juma Sultan, who is known for his work with Jimi Hendrix.

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Charlie Apicella is the founder and program director of Blues Alive: ancestral voices of the blues

He serves on the Generation Blues education committee at the Blues Foundation in Memphis

He is Vice President of Education for the North Jersey Blues Society

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He is an Eastman Guitars Featured Artist a

Guild Guitars Sponsored Artist and a

ZT Amplifiers Official Artist

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He has been a TrueFire educator since 2018

and has published two masterclass lessons for DownBeat magazine