About John

Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, Mandocello

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, John Imholz was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Mr. Imholz began playing guitar at the age of fourteen. Early musical influences included the classical guitar playing of John Williams and Andres Segovia, the jazz playing of Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Les Paul, Charley Christian, and the rock music of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Steve Morse.

These varied influences came together professionally for John in his early twenties when he began playing guitar, banjo, and mandolin in such diverse settings as rock bands, jazz ensembles, chamber groups, with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, Joffrey Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, and many local theater pit orchestras, where his knack of shifting styles, musical genres, and instruments was a definite asset.

For fifteen years John played mandocello for the Modern Mandolin Quartet; he also did much of the arranging for the group, including works by Gershwin, Tchaikovsky,  Bach, Prokofiev, and Bernstein. Currently Mr. Imholz plays locally and on the road in symphonic, theater, and chamber orchestras. He also plays recording sessions as well as composing, arranging and performing his own original music.