About Us
Go on a musical journey with an exciting musical collaboration “Valle Musico” consisting of guitarists Pat Winger and John Ramo, and drummer and percussionist Larry Dutmer. With a musical mission to bring a fusion of new interpretations of classical, jazz and world-beat music to audiences, Valle Musico has a musical focus that explores the confluence of these genres in exciting and new musical ways.
Valle Musico
Valle Musico was inspired by John Ramo’s meeting the musical icon Paul Simon in his apartment in New York City when “Graceland’ was first released in 1987. His conversation with Paul Simon inspired John , especially when Paul Simon stated that music, for him, was essentially about “guitars and percussion”. This theme forms the basis of Valle Musico’s musical collaboration - an exploration of guitars and percussion, the improvisational and notated aspects of classical, jazz, worldbeat musical genres and how they blend, combine and fuse.
Pat Winger, (Steel/Nylon String Guitars)- started playing guitar at age 6 and learned by watching and listening. By age 14 Pat was playing in bars and clubs for dances and social occasions, mostly variety music. (country, rock, pop, polkas, waltzes) After high school he went on the road for a number of years with a Filipino band playing mostly top 40 dance music and some Polynesian music. Pat free-lanced playing everything from solo jazz guitar to concerts with a Southern Baptist Choir. an Iranian band playing Persian and Arabic music and then with a serious blues band. After moving out west Pat started playing mostly acoustic guitars (nylon and steel string) and is continuing to explore many musical styles.
John Ramo, (Godin MIDI & Classical Guitar) has been playing guitar since age 14. He has a BA degree in Music , studied and taught classical guitar in Washington DC. at GW University. He studied with John Marlowe at American University, completed Master Classes with Michael Lorimer, Carlos Barbosa Lima, Jose Tomas (student of Segovia) and Ralph Towner. He has also composed for film and video. He also has four albums of original music available on Itunes; “Solo Duets”, “Where the Snow Stays White”, “Polarities” and a children's music collection “Children’s Musical Theater”.
Larry Dutmer studied percussion at Iowa State University where he played in the percussion ensemble, jazz ensemble, orchestra and marching band. After graduating he relocated to Chicago where he was busy playing with several bands and theater companies. He moved to Gypsum, Colorado after he landed a counseling job for Colorado Mountain College in Vail. He has been in the area since 1996 and has been busy working with various bands and theater companies in the Vail and Roaring Fork Valleys.
Matthew Trinidad is a lifelong musician who took a brief hiatus from music to pursue what Robert Frost might describe as “the path(more) traveled by”. His music career began in earnest at CU. There, he studied theory and performance, and played in ensembles and various combos. Though he later switched academic focus, Matthew stayed active in music, did session work, and gigged every Sunday for several years in the house band for a mega church, performed in several other bands, and played on and produced an album with Grammy nominated singer-songwriter Katie Herzig. He retired from music in the mid 2000’s but recently decided to resurrect his music career. Matthew said, “I thank my lucky starts for the opportunity to play with the other very talented musicians of Valle Musico”.
