Lenny White and Present Tense (New Presstext updated 24/2/09)
(George Colligan, keyboards; Tom Guarna, guitar; Richie Goods, bass)

Energized by the success of last Summer's RETURN TO FOREVER 30-Year Reunion, Lenny White was anxious to introduce his next-generation PRESENT TENSE band to the same enthusiastic RTF audience that had filled concert halls around the world.

Lenny formed the original PRESENT TENSE in 1995, a band able to deliver Lenny’s eclectic musical message. After his beginning with Miles Davis ("Bitches Brew"), Freddie Hubbard (“Red Clay”), and RETURN TO FOREVER as an important founding father of "Fusion," Lenny went on to explore the widest musical spectrum, as both producer and bandleader.

Starting with a number of solo Fusion albums, Lenny moved into the 1980s, succeeding in genres ranging from Straight-Ahead Jazz (“Echoes of an Era” with Chaka Khan and "The Griffith Park Collection") to the Progressive Pop of his band Twennynine, Bass/Drum Funk with bassist Marcus Miller and the Jamaica Boys, and soundtracks for Spike Lee (“School Daze”) and the Hudlin Brothers ("House Party").

Lenny then formed PRESENT TENSE with a mind that his musical exploration was still in its infancy. The first self-titled record included elements pulled from Lenny’s entire career, but moved forward into Hard Rock, Modern Hip-Hop, and even what could be described as Heavy Metal. Today, the exploration continues with Lenny’s new PRESENT TENSE, another band of younger, well-educated players who understand the complexities of Jazz, but who still have the open-minded abandon to follow Lenny’s quick-to-change-direction musical lead.

The band was in the studio, well into recording its new record when the RTF reunion was announced, but instead of hindering the new PRESENT TENSE progress, similar to how the experience reinvigorated Lenny, it also inspired the band.

Each member is an accomplished musician and bandleader in their own right, but when it came to RTF, they, like most others, were inspired to see Lenny, Chick (Corea), Stanley (Clarke), and Al (Di Meola) together again, blazing through their ground-breaking, genre-defining compostions with all the intensity and passion as when they invented it.

TOM GUARNA: (guitar) As the guitarist in Colligan’s MAD SCIENCE project, Tom was the obvious choice to fill the PRESENT TENSE guitar position.

Born in Brooklyn, guitarist Tom Guarna began his musical career at age 15, when his father introduced him to the guitar. He has performed and recorded with jazz and pop/rock bands nationwide ever since.

Guarna developed an interest in classical guitar performance and composition at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in 1986, where he studied guitar with Michael Cedric Smith and composition with Robert Starer. In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the Guitar Institute of Technology. Shortly after graduating, he moved back to New York, playing local gigs and studying with Steve Kahn and John Abercrombie.

In 1995, Tom Guarna joined Blood Sweat and Tears and toured extensively for the next three years with that group. Capping off the tour, Guarna recorded an album entitled “Bloodlines,” with David Clayton Thomas, lead singer of Blood, Sweat and Tears. Since then, he has been busy performing with a wide range of artists including The Yellowjackets, Randy Brecker, Victor Bailey, Fred Wesley, Mike Clark, Uri Caine, Chris Minh Doky, Buddy Defranco, Billy Drummond, and the Mingus Orchestra.

Guarna also holds a degree in music performance from New School University in Manhattan. In addition to his work as a performer and composer, Guarna has been on the jazz faculty at Lehigh University for the past eight years, where he works as an adjunct professor alongside guitar greats as Vic Juris and Bob Devos.

RICHIE GOODS: (bass guitar) As a student of Ron Carter, one of Lenny’s closest musician friends, Lenny had long been aware of Richie, and had seen him play in New York City, both upright with the likes of Mulgrew Miller and Stanley Turrentine, and electric with his own Nuclear Fusion band. There was no doubt in Lenny’s mind that the young bassist would be perfect for where he wanted to take PRESENT TENSE. Richie performs with many of today’s prominent Hip-Hop and R&B artists including DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera, Common, and Alicia Keys. A Pittsburgh native and Berklee graduate, Richie has planted his roots in Jazz, gospel, funk, and soul, and is most valuable in his ability to combine these talents and influences in ways that bring a newness to the genres of Jazz and Hip Hop/R&B. Growing up in the churches of Pittsburgh, he began playing music at the age of five, and his love of music continued to grow while attending CAPA high school. It was in hometown clubs like the Balcony and O’Rourke’s that Goods started his performance career playing the electric bass. Upon graduation from CAPA, he attended Boston’s Berklee College of music and expanded his musical repertoire to the upright bass. Under tutelage of the great jazz bass masters Ron Carter and Ray Brown in New York City, Goods soon proved his own mastery, establishing himself as one of the prominent new bassists in the New York City Jazz community. His abilities did not go unrecognized. Soon after graduation from Berklee, he began performing and touring with the likes of Milt Jackson, Stanley Turrentine, Mulgrew Miller, Brian McKnight, Russell Malone and The Manhattan Transfer.