A jazz life lived across four countries.

Biography

Cincinnati-born guitarist Greg Chako studied at Berklee College of Music before building a career that has taken him from New England jazz rooms to the grand hotels of Asia and back home again. In Amherst, Massachusetts, he produced a jazz concert series through a Massachusetts Council on the Arts grant and founded the Amherst Jazz Society; back in Cincinnati, he booked and led the weekly jazz program at Doc’s Place, featuring local players and nationally known artists.

In 1992 he moved to Hong Kong, where a fortnight of jazz at the Captain’s Bar of the Mandarin Oriental became a weekly residency and his first album, Everything I Love. He also appeared with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. In Singapore, he led long-running bands at Raffles Hotel’s Bar & Billiard Room and the Pan Pacific, played the CHIJMES concert series and the Heineken Jazz Festival in Kuala Lumpur, and was the subject of the documentary An American Cat in the Lion City.

In 2002 he established the resident jazz program at the Niche Bar of The Westin Shanghai at Bund Center, before moving to Japan, where he led a weekly engagement at The Imperial Hotel Tokyo, a residency at the InterContinental Yokohama Grand, and his Collaboration Quartet at clubs including JZ Brat, Motion Blue and Body and Soul. His Japan years produced Where We Find Ourselves (2005), Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd (2006), Paint a Picture, Tell a Story (2007) and Everybody’s Got a Name (2008).

Returning to the United States, he earned a Master of Music in Jazz Studies and Arranging at William Paterson University, then entered the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the Eastman School of Music, where his lecture-recital on arranging for solo jazz guitar was nominated among the best of the year and led to his first solo-guitar album, My World on Six Strings.

His music blends mainstream and hard bop with Latin and world influences, with regular placements on the JazzWeek, CMJ and RMR jazz charts, including several Top Ten appearances. Since joining Mint 400 Records and Raining Music in 2022, he has released about three albums a year, drawing praise from Dave Stryker, Rufus Reid, Peter Bernstein and John Clayton, and collaborating with former Miles Davis percussionist Steve Thornton.

Back in Cincinnati since 2017, Greg performs at Caffè Vivace and venues across the region, leads a long-running Saturday residency at Sorrento’s Italian Joint, teaches privately, and writes for Jazz Guitar Today. In 2025 he was inducted into the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame, and in 2026 he founded EverybodyLovesMusic and released Hard Bop: For the Record, his 25th album as a leader.