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What: Acoustic Early Jazz
When: Friday, March 28, 8 p.m.
Where: St. Stephen's Community Room, Wilkes-Barre

Although he and his cohorts hail from New York City, Matt Munisteri's music could perhaps best be described as "midwestern swing."

There's a pastoral quality to Munisteri's Cole Porter-influenced songs, delivered in a warm, "regular guy" voice, and the band's front line of lightly amplified acoustic guitar, trumpet, and accordion make it the perfect replacement combo should the Prairie Home Companion house band ever have a run-in with a dodgy batch of tuna casserole.

Munisteri's wit is prodigious (he seems to have swallowed a rhyming dictionary) and his antecedents can be gleaned from a look at the songs he covers on Love Story.

Choice selections from Willard Robison, Hoagy Carmichael, Bob Dylan, and Van Dyke Parks sit comfortably among Munisteri's own. He's also a talented and original guitarist, alternating funky fingerpicking accompaniment, which often doubles his vocal melody, with pungent, jazzy single-note solos, and his midrangey, lo-fi tone is more reminiscent of blues guitarists than any of the standard jazz models.