John La Barbera is a musical composer, arranger and plays guitar and mandolin. He has performed at concert halls and music festivals, including the Montreal Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall, the Felt Forum, Alice Tully Hall, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, UCLA, Field Museum in Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco World Music Festival, Central Park Summer Stage and at the Jones Beach Theater. He has toured tours throughout Eastern Europe, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and in Brazil, where he was sponsored by the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasil Festeiro and SESC, in São Paulo.He holds a M.M. from William Paterson University and a B.M. from the Hartt School of Music, (Univ.of Hartford), and graduate courses at Hunter College (NYC) in ethnomusicology, Villa Schifanoia (Rosary College), in Florence, Italy and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, the film music seminar with Ennio Morricone.He currently teaches at the Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey and has taught at The Julius Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford ),The Guitar Study Center of the New School in New York; Sessione Sienese, in Siena, Italy; SASI in Bratislava, Slovakia; and SESC in São Paulo, Brazil. He conducts workshops and lectures on mandolin and acoustic guitar styles, ethnomusicology, world music, and has written for Acoustic Guitar magazine