“Greg Ruby lives and breathes jazz guitar” states the Fretboard Journal. From acoustic swing to jazz manouche to surf music, Ruby inhabits many musical forms and brings his compositional voice to each of them.
Born in Toronto, Ruby’s early years were spent near Pittsburgh before moving to the West Coast in the late 1990’s. On the forefront of the Django Reinhardt renaissance, he co-founded the seminal group Hot Club Sandwich and later joined Seattle’s Pearl Django. With appearances at the burgeoning west coast Django festivals, Ruby accompanied jazz guitar greats including Howard Alden, Patrick Saussois, Frank Vignola, Gonzalo Bergara and John Jorgensen. By 2010, Ruby stepped out on his own and released Look Both Ways, an album of all original compositions which Dan Hicks (of the Hot Licks) declared “is a soundtrack in search of a movie.” The album reached #1 on the Roots Music Review radio chart. In 2015, Ruby’s attention turned to the roots of jazz in the Pacific Northwest with Syncopated Classic – a project which unearthed, restored and recorded the lost compositions of 1920’s Seattle jazz pioneer Frank D. Waldron. The record was awarded “Northwest Jazz recording of the year.” His most recent album, Corner Café, cowritten with accordionist Steve Rice, evokes mid-century Parisian swing bands.
Ruby graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree from Cornish College of the Arts. He is the Guitar Week Coordinator for the Swannanoa Gathering and has taught extensively at festivals, camps and schools including: DjangoFest NW, Django in June, Wintergrass and the Seattle Jazz Night School. He has authored Chord Melody Made Easy(ish) 2024, the Oscar Alemán Play-Along Songbook Vol. 1 (2019), Frank D. Waldron: Seattle’s Syncopated Classic (2018), the Pearl Django Play-Along Book Vol.1 (2005) and is a contributing author for Acoustic Guitar magazine.
In November 2019, Greg moved to New York City – just months before it shuttered due to COVID-19. At the onset of the pandemic, he took the A Train south to Rockaway Beach where lives, surfs, and continues to cultivate a creative life composing, recording, teaching online guitar lessons and gigging around NYC.