This is a poster I did for the 2010 KU Jazz Festival, taking place on March 5-6. This year’s festival will feature Kenny Garrett (one of my favorite alto players) and his quartet. Here are a couple of older videos (like this little tune called Giant Steps) that I think explains it all. If you’re a music fan, definitely head down for both nights of the festival!

Sorry for the brief hiatus from posting. It’s been an extremely busy month with work and there was also a baby born along the way, so I haven’t had much time to post!

That being said, I wanted to showcase a poster I just finished for the 2009 University of Kansas Jazz Festival. This year will feature trombonist John Fedchock as well as the KU Jazz Ensemble I playing the Rolling Stones Big Band Project with saxophonist Tim Ries and pianist Matt Harris. The dates are March 6-7, so mark your calendars!

I’ve just recently started working for the KU Jazz department and they have a fun holiday-themed concert coming up on Thursday, Dec. 11 at 7:30 p.m. There are several guest artists and many of the student groups will be featured, so this will be a great way to start off your holiday season and support jazz at KU!

Here’s my poster for the event:

www.mattwilsonjazz.com

I’m extremely excited to announce the launch of a new website that I’ve been working on for jazz drummer, Matt Wilson! Matt is an educator/drummer/composer & band leader and a winner of several Downbeat and Jazz Journalists Assn. awards.

Over the past month or so I’ve been working along side my good friend, fellow sax player and web programmer/designer Greg to design this site. I first saw Matt perform live with his group Arts and Crafts in 2007 at the IAJE conference in New York and was blown away, so when Greg approached me about working on his website, it was a total no brainer. Matt’s a great guy and an incredible musician, so if you ever have the chance to hear him perform, be sure and check it out.

(Here’s a shot of a secondary page from the site)

Here’s a video of Arts and Crafts performing The Scenic Route live at the 2007 Elmhurst Jazz Festival. Also of note is the phenomenal organist/pianist of the group, Gary Versace, who taught here at the KU Jazz Workshop for a number of years.

UPDATE: Matt’s site was recently featured on the web-design blog, Most Inspired!

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.

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.

I’ve always been interested in the parallels between the visual and performing arts. In particular, I’ve found that jazz music shares a lot of similarities with art and design, not only in the final product, but in the process and language used to create it. So, I “composed” this piece as a way to start exploring this connection. Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian abstract painter, was also interested in the link between music and art and often gave his works musical titles. In homage to his improvisational paintings, I titled this piece Improvisation f2.8.

Below is the poster I designed for the recital which makes a little more sense when you watch the video!

(That’s me in college.)

Skip to post-graduation . . . as you might imagine, there isn’t a ton of opportunities to play in big bands outside of school. There are some good ones in the area, but it’s just not quite the same and they’re hard to get into. This weekend, I was able to sub on lead alto with the Jazzhaus Big Band at the American Legion here in Lawrence. This is a band that gets together twice a month and just reads tunes that they’ve compiled over the last 20-30 years and . . . it’s old school. That certainly doesn’t mean that it’s bad at all, but it’s definitely a different style of big band playing that I am used to. So, it’s a lot of fun to sit in with these guys, hear their stories, get to practice my sight reading and lead a sax section again.

There were a handful of people there to listen and dance, since it’s mostly dance music. Seeing people moving around and having fun to the music you’re playing is pretty cool!

The band is basically run by this man, Clyde Bysom. Clyde is a Lawrence musician who has been playing music almost his entire life. This is particularly impressive since he just celebrated his 90th birthday this year! He told me today that he’s still playing in two big bands, and clarinet quartet and a saxophone quartet. If I even get close to Clyde’s age and am still able to play music, I’ll consider myself extremely lucky!

As a side note, if you EVER have a chance to hear the Maria Schneider Orchestra, DO IT! Don’t ask questions . . . just buy tickets and enjoy. She’s amazing!