This Sunday, May 4th, there are a couple of great art events to keep your eyes open for. The first is the 47th Annual Art in the Park event put on by the Lawrence Art Guild. I’ll be playing for about an hour in a jazz trio starting at 11:00 a.m., so if you’re free and want to see some cool art, you should come on by South Park on Mass. Street!

Also on Sunday is KJHK’s Jazz in the Park event featuring the Chicago Afrobeat Project, The Yards, and RedLefty. I have a couple of good friends in The Yards and they’re an amazing band, so get out there and support some live music! The other bands are great too, so it’ll be a LOT of fun! It’ll be at Watson Park (the train park) staring at 1:00 p.m.

I just wrapped up a new website for the Kansas Summer Flute Festival, a new summer flute camp for all ages from beginning flute students to experienced high school musicians. The festival organizers Annie and Mary wanted a very direct and clear website that was eye catching, yet easy to navigate.

Rather than have a bunch of columns or unnecessary information, I decided to try out a skinny design (440px!) to see how it works and I think it’ll be just what they’re needing. I also utilized some MooTools on the front page which are some cool javascripts that fail very elegantly if the viewer doesn’t have javascript running. Always important for accessible websites!

Check it out at www.kansasflutefestival.com!

Between massive KU celebrations around Lawrence, I’ve been going poster-crazy this past week! Here’s one for the UGA (University of Georgia, Athens) band department who I’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to work with over the past year. The director of bands there has been a good friend of mine for several years and it’s been great to get to help advertise his efforts there.

In a bold effort to bring back the lost art of the mixtape, then there’s a new online service called Muxtape that allows you to create a music mix and share it easily with others online. It’s simple, easy to use and is even supposed to be iPhone friendly. Although it seems like there are certainly some legal issues here, it’s a neat way to learn about different music, so we’ll see how long it sticks around. The creator, Justin Oullette, is also a photographer with some pretty cool work.

You can check out a mix I made at designojek.muxtape.com and I’ll change it around from time to time.

UPDATE: They’ve added RSS feeds now, so you can keep track of any edits using your favorite feed reeder! Also, I’ve been trying out Google Reader for the past couple of months and I think I’m sold on it.

For the chamber music fans out there, at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11, 2008, saxophonist Vince Gnojek will give a recital at the University of Kansas. Mr. Gnojek is the professor of saxophone at KU and will be accompanied by Holly Beneventi Page, piano and Brian Gnojek, clarinet. The program will feature works by all modern composers with the exception of Jules Demersseman who was one of the very first composers for the saxophone. This recital marks Gnojek’s 20th year at KU and coincides with the 50th Anniversary of Murphy Hall.

In 2005, my wife and I did a recital together where we each played a half-concert worth of music. In addition to some unaccompanied Piazzolla études, the big piece that I performed was a jazz improvisation with my father Vince Gnojek. I gathered together a series of 10 photographs which were a combination of my own photographs and some found images. All of them were abstract and had strong elements of texture and color. I projected them onto a large screen and we each stood on either side of it and, with the lights turned out, we performed an improvised piece of music that responded to the photography that we were looking at.
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Rechelle Malin is a folk singer, songwriter, author, blogger, mother, the wife of a country doctor, and most recently, a horticulturist. Her writing and lyrics are clever, humorous and deeply personal. So, you can imagine my excitement when I was asked to design the artwork for her newest album, Secret Songs!
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The KU Wind Ensemble is the premier wind band at the University of Kansas. This is the poster for their upcoming concert on Feb. 14th, 2008 which should be a great one! It’s at the Lied Center on the KU campus and if you’re looking for a Valentine’s date idea . . .