JON GUERRA
Rooted in the melodic soil from which Radiohead, Bob Dylan and Rufus Wainwright have sprouted, Jonathan Guerra has been whittling away at listeners’ souls since he was handed a guitar and discovered the power of music.
Guerra was born with rhythms, melodies and keys twisted into his fibers, but it took time for him to untangle that mess. As a kid, he received almost no musical training aside from the Cuban and Argentine folk songs his parents taught him (his mother and father are both immigrants).
When Guerra was 12, his family made a jolting cross-country move to small-town Wheaton, IL, and, being the only non-Anglo kid for miles, his mother handed him the family guitar to help him unravel and tussle the only thing that made sense to him at the time: music. He joined the school choir, discovered Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Bach and Brahms, and, in an 
advanced theory class in high school, he realized that there were names for what he had intuited. Suddenly, music was more than just a force racking his soul; it was an Art that made sense on every level and provided him with meaning, order, and most importantly, an expression of beauty. “Suddenly, there was beauty, there was movement, there was balance and unbalance, there was justice and injustice, there was love, and there was God,” Guerra says.
But it wasn’t until 2004, when he formed the band Scarecrow Garden, that Guerra began to truly harness the music which had haunted him. As he wrestled out many of the band’s compositions, he gave fans a sound that was as tantalizing as the manic flames of a campfire and as authentic as a feverish monk, and he discovered his life’s passion. 
Scarecrow Garden’s popularity quickly raged throughout the Chicagoland are, and the band entertained various contracts with Warner Brothers and Virgin Records. But there was something missing. “I knew that the timing was wrong. I needed something more to say.” The night they were preparing to sign a contract, Guerra ended the band, and announced his plans to study Historical Theology.
Guerra graduated from Moody Bible Institute in 2008, and, prompted by God in various undeniable ways upon graduation, he began to slowly assemble the tool with which he would “say something” to Chicago. He formed Milano in early 2009 as a means to reach the city of Chicago first, then to reach any ears who will listen. Through Milano, Guerra divulges new depths and breadths of ingenuity. Orchestral movements mix with his voice – which has been curing in hard reality and marinating in honesty – to shore up stunning lyrics that turn daily aches into sacramental feelings. Listening to this musical luminary bleed onto his treble and bass clefs, listeners will be reminded that the Transcendent is always mightily immanent and that music is not meant to drown out the racket around us but to draw out the luster in it.
Waiting on the release of Milano’s first EP, Guerra and crew are infiltrating the trenches of Chicago’s music scene through various shows at local venues. To hear Milano…
Click here to find Jon & Milano on MySpace.
Click here to find Jon & Milano on Facebook
Below is a sample of Jon’s work:
