Paul Masvidal

In 2019, the duo composed end title song for the feature film The Deported which made the official selection at the prestigious New York Latin Film Festival and the Beverly Hills Film Festival.

In 2019 and 2020 Masvidal ventured into releasing work as a solo artist under the name 'Masvidal' releasing three conceptual albums titled Mythical Human Vessel. The artwork for the three albums was designed by visual artists Igraine Grey and Jonatan Martinez aka Greymar.

"I grew up playing classical guitar and listened to American folk and Cuban music as a kid growing up in Miami. Eventually I was exposed to jazz and world music which turned my world upside down in terms of harmonic and rhythmic complexity and developing a melodic language. The standards alone have always been a huge part of my interest in writing deceptively complex songs and of course Bach, as a composer is probably still my biggest influence. My older brother turned me on to classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Sabbath and Pink Floyd, which eventually led to me exploring heavier stuff like Metallica and Slayer. The Beatles have always been big for me, especially the later records. Certain guitarists like Pat Metheney and Ben Monder opened up new vistas and even classic jazz guys like Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery blow my mind every time I listen to them. For me, inspiration is everywhere and always a reflection of where I’m at as an artist..."

"I’ve always been greatly inspired by composers like Bach, Ravel and Jazz pianists, Keith Jarrett and Bill Evans, and Glen Gould who's Bach Goldberg Variations are some of my all time favorite things to listen to. There's also horn players like Charlie Parker, Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy. Pablo Casals, Cello Suites is one of my great joys, Brian Eno's ambient music speaks to me on multiple levels, and Ravi Shankar's records especially his experimental electronic records ...the list could go on!"

“Cynic was a big thing for me personally... they had something I hadn’t heard in metal up to that point, a kind of ‘jazzy’ approach to the songwriting [that] was really intriguing and influential."

In January 2018, Cynic released a digital single, titled "Humanoid". The song featured new drummer, Matt Lynch with longtime bassist and collaborator, Sean Malone. "Humanoid" marked the first new music from the progressive pioneers since the band's 2014 album Kindly Bent to Free Us. The artwork features a detail from the painting "Ayahuasca Dream" by Robert Venosa, Cynic's longtime collaborator and celebrated artist who passed away in 2011.

Masvidal began work with his brother, Maheshananda, an established and influential teacher of Yoga and Ayurveda in 2018, offering Ayurvedic and CBD-based products with company More Life Market.

In 2016, Masvidal, along with collaborator Amy Correia, composed the musical score for the award-winning feature film The Tiger Hunter, featuring lead actor Danny Pudi. The film was released in over 60 cities nationwide, won the grand jury prize for narrative feature at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, and garnered effusively positive reviews from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and more. In 2017, Correia and Masvidal scored the main title to CW Networks, game show "Save To Win".

In 2015, Masvidal ventured into the performing-arts world with masked duo Onward with Love (OwL), a musical collaboration with acclaimed singer-songwriter Amy Correia. The pair's singular points of view make for an intriguing synthesis of Eastern-influenced philosophy, symbolist poetry, American blues, jazz and experimental rock. OwL has performed in concert venues, hospices and art galleries around greater Los Angeles. In 2015, OwL unveiled a video for the song "Kali In My Arms", which was featured in the HBO TV series and film, Looking. The duo officially released the song digitally in 2019 have plans to release a full-length record by 2021.

Cynic's third full-length album, Kindly Bent to Free Us, released in 2014, was hailed by Malcome Dome of Prog magazine as "an album that transcends all the limitations of genre and era... There are few albums which can claim such a remarkable hold." The album rose to No. 4 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart in February 2014 and was No. 1 on CMJ's Loud Rock Chart the following month.

In May 2014, the Los Angeles Times did a front cover story on Masvidal's coming out as a homosexual along with fellow Cynic member Sean Reinert. For gay pride month June 2017, Masvidal talked to Billboard about his experiences as gay man in the rock and metal community:

In 2013, Masvidal joined forces with other original members of the Death Human line up and toured worldwide in honor of Chuck Schuldiner's legacy with the group DTA (Death to All).

"Masvidal creates an air of loss, longing and bereavement which is unparalleled in the field. Even in the alternative rock scene, where such voices are replete, his stands above in its emotional impact. Couple this with layered, acoustic guitars, haunting, rusty synths where needed and drumming which ties the whole thing into a neat, digestible package and you get Aeon Spoke. It's a powerful, yet oddly simple at times, side project which channels the melancholy and estrangement that had always laced Cynic's main body of work." – Karlo Doroc, Heavy Blog is Heavy

"Kindly Bent to Free Us [is] an album that, while most definitely in the realm of prog rock, has the kind of open, unpretentious air that makes Rush such an easy-to-love band." – AllMusic.com

"The alchemy of front man Paul Masvidal (vocals, guitars & keyboards) combined with rhythmaniac Sean Reinert (drums) and the technically divine Sean Malone (bass), make Cynic one of the finest Prog Rock bands to have ever of landed on Planet Earth" – burningfist.co.uk

Masvidal also writes and performs music for television and motion pictures. His credits include main title (composer credit) on an Emmy nominated NBC teen series show Operation Junkyard, short films The Yellow Umbrella, A Bride in Black, assistant to Ben Vaughn and session musician for Carsey Warner network sitcoms That '70s Show and 3rd Rock from the Sun. In 2013 Masvidal founded composing collective Still Motion Music which scored music for numerous TV series on H2, National Geographic, Bravo, ABC and PBS. Masvidal also has a library songs regularly performed on network and cable television. Music writer Jeff Wagner, in his book Mean Deviation: Four Decades of Progressive Heavy Metal, stated that "any viewer of 3rd Rock from the Sun, That '70s Show, The Price Is Right, Queer as Folk, and any number of random television programs has probably stumbled across Cynic's core members without even knowing it." In 2015, Masvidal produced a children's album for actor Jim Carrey titled How Roland Rolls.

"Venosa and Masvidal recognized each other as fellow artists in the pursuit of authentic, spirit-based artistic expression in sound and imagery." –  Martina Hoffman, painter and Venosa's wife, from the book ...And Justice for Art, Stories About Heavy Metal Album Covers by Ramon Martos

Produced by three-time Grammy winner Warren Riker (Lauryn Hill, Fugees, Santana). Drawing on influences from musicians John Lennon, Brian Eno and Elliott Smith to visual artists – Mark Rothko, Cai Guo-Qiang, Hilma af Klimt, the songs embrace concise forms and catchy melodies in spite of their often painful subject matters of loss, depression, and heartache. In Masvidal's view, "pain is not something to be feared but embraced as inevitable and, ultimately, a doorway." Billboard described the work Mythical Human Vessel, finds Masvidal at his most vulnerable, often with just a guitar and vocals, while experimenting with brain entrainment, a series of pulsing sounds that are said to lead to enhanced neural perception and memory."

"The EZ Board is a sturdy, lightweight picture and word board that allows weak, ventilated patients to express wants, convey needs, and indicate the type, degree, and location of their pain and other concerns. Through the Vidatak EZ Board, intubated patients can reduce their frustration while increasing their satisfaction with the medical attention they receive. [The EZ Board] has currently become the standard in health-care for those intubated at thousands of hospitals in the U.S., including Sinai Health, Atrium Health, New York-Presbyterian, Penn Health, St. Jude's, VA Health System, Children's Health, UPMC, Kaiser, UCLA, Johns Hopkins Health System, and many more." – einpresswire.com

Masvidal lent his name to a line of signature instruments aptly named, Masvidalien Cosmo produced by Sweden's award-winning .strandberg* Guitars and has been playing his signature Strandberg's publicly since 2013. He had his recording debut with this new Strandberg guitar on Cynic's 2014 release, Kindly Bent to Free Us. During his early Death and Cynic years, Masvidal played Steinberger GM & GR headless 6-string guitars. He was seen playing a Gibson SG and a Martin acoustic with Æon Spoke, and has been playing the Composite Acoustics Cargo publicly with his solo work. Masvidal also talked about the gear that he had used in the past and in the recent Cynic records in an interview with online publication Gear Gods.

In 2010 and 2011 Cynic released two conceptual records: Re-Traced (2010), featuring re-interpretations of several Traced in Air tracks, and Carbon-Based Anatomy (2011). Rolling Stone music critic Hank Shteamer raved in his review of Carbon-Based Anatomy: "The title track is a perfectly paced stunner...Cynic sounds fully liberated, not just from their metal past but from any aesthetic concern other than assembling a great song." The album's opening track "Amidst The Coals" features artist, Amy Correia singing an adaptation of an Amazonian Icaro, inspired by Masvidal's work with the South American entheogenic brew, Ayahuasca.

Cynic reunited in 2008 to record Traced in Air, their comeback opus. In his review, New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff wrote that Cynic "should be understood not so much alongside any metal bands but along with the radical harmonic progressives in the last 45 years of pop and jazz: composers like Milton Nascimento, the Beach Boys or Pat Metheny." Huffington Post described it as "A Modern Classic."

During Cynic's hiatus, Masvidal founded Æon Spoke, whose ethereal indie rock was heralded as "beautiful, exquisite [and] destined for greatness" by Janice Long, BBC Radio. In 2004, the band received airplay on BBC Radio 2 and XFM for the single "Silence". The following year, the track "Emmanuel" appeared in the indie breakout film What the Bleep Do We Know!? Æon Spoke songs have also appeared on the Warner Bros. television series Smallville, One Tree Hill and the motion picture Cry Wolf.  Their self-titled debut LP was released in 2007 on SPV Records.

As an inventor, Masvidal filed a successful patent (Vidatak EZ Board US Patent No. 6,422,875) in 1999 (which was approved in 2002), involving a device to assist voice-disabled individuals. Masvidal's interest stems from his extensive volunteer work with AIDS patients, the terminally ill and the elderly in the Los Angeles area. During the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, Vidatak EZ Boards were donated to hospitals and clinicians to alleviate the patients' condition.

1993 saw the release of the "progressive landmark" album, Focus on Roadrunner Records. Focus was listed in Rock Hard magazine's book as one of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. Loudwire writer Graham Hartmann named Focus the ninth best debut metal album of all time. Roadrunner released a reissue of Focus in 2004 as a special collector's edition due to high demand. Cynic took a 12-year hiatus in 1995 after recording "The Portal Tapes" demos. Masvidal moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 1996, upon being offered a full scholarship at Musicians Institute, where he also began work as a session musician and composer for network TV and film.

Masvidal co-founded Cynic with drummer Sean Reinert in the late 80s, having released four demos from 1988 to 1991 that circulated in the underground tape trading community. Masvidal developed a reputation in the South Florida music scene for his musicianship and attention began to grow quickly around the band. In 1989, while still in high school, Masvidal toured Mexico as a replacement guitarist for the band Death, but declined an invitation to permanently join the band to remain committed to Cynic. This had many journalists curious at the time, since Death were emerging as an influential and popular act, but Masvidal persevered with Cynic. However, Masvidal returned to the Death fold replacing guitarist James Murphy for tour dates on the international Spiritual Healing tour in 1990. In 1991, Masvidal and fellow Cynic member Reinert were recruited by Death to record the "groundbreaking" Human. In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine placed the album as the 70th greatest metal albums of all time. Human was Death's best-selling album, and was ranked number 82 on the October 2006 issue of Guitar World magazine's list of the greatest 100 guitar albums of all time. Death ranked number 1 in thetoptens.com's most influential death metal bands. Masvidal toured extensively for Human, in addition to appearing in the music video for "Lack of Comprehension", which debuted on MTV's Headbangers Ball. After fulfilling their obligations with Death, both Masvidal and Reinert returned to Cynic in 1992.

Masvidal's early years were spent in the Miami area where he studied classical guitar with Carlos Molina, and in college, with jazz musician, Dave Weissbrot who inspired his love of jazz, Steinberger guitars, and introduced him to Buddhist philosophy. Masvidal developed an interest in mysticism and esoteric topics from a young age, becoming an initiate to Kriya Yoga in his late teens and eventually a practitioner of Buddhist meditation by his late 20s. Masvidal met drummer Sean Reinert in 1984 at Gulliver Academy In Miami, where the duo began making music the day they met, eventually forming the pre-Cynic groups, Crypha and Seaweed.

Paul Albert Masvidal (born January 20, 1971) is an American guitarist, songwriter and producer. He is the guitarist, singer, and a founding member of the progressive rock band, Cynic. He has remained a continual member for nearly three decades and has developed numerous other projects including Æon Spoke, Onward with Love, and recently his solo work. Masvidal was ranked in Loudwire's 66 Best Hard Rock + Metal Guitarists Of All Time and 50 Best Metal Songwriters of All Time.