It should be a great concert and the LCO is in the midst of making some big slashes this year, so come on out for an evening of great 20th century music!

This is a new poster for the upcoming KU Wind Ensemble concert featuring several works for french horn. Lots of twists and turns in that instrument, but it’s beautiful when played well!

This is a poster I did for a jazz/wind ensemble concert that featured the new tenor saxophone concerto GO! by Bob Mintzer with Vince Gnojek on saxophone. The concert also featured a new Dan Gailey arrangement of Radiohead’s Knives Out as well as one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, Hang Gliding by Maria Schneider.

My loose inspiration for the poster was the artwork for Dexter Gordon’s incredible jazz album Go . That album, besides being one of the great jazz recordings in history, was designed by Reid Miles who did several classic album designs for Blue Note records. I hope at least a couple of people picked up on the “Go” connection!

Design by Reid Miles

Below is the premier performance of GO! (3rd mvt.) featuring Bob Mintzer with the University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble. It’s a difficult piece that is a nice blend of jazz elements with wind ensemble writing. It contains some altissimo lines that are crazy hard!

This is a flyer I did for the Midwest Double Reed Society’s 2010 Double Reed Festival in Lawrence, KS. It’s a great group of people to work with and, since they use their fliers as mailers, posters and handouts, it’s always a challenge to create a piece that serves all purposes.

I recently did a poster for the University of Georgia that centered around a musical piece called The Here and Now by Christopher Theofanidis. The work is based on selected poems by the Persian poet Rumi and uses the powerful and mysterious qualities of band and choir. They wanted it to have a decidedly Middle Eastern/Turkish feel to it and so I thought it would be the perfect chance to try doing some hand-drawn calligraphy.

I should make it clear that I drew all of the type in Adobe Illustrator and didn’t actually get out the calligraphy pens (mostly due to a tight deadline), but it was a lot of fun to do and I hope to do more things like it in the future. My apologies to the purists out there!

Here’s a quick pencil sketch that I used as a starting point for the illustration.

And here’s the final type!

You can hear some audio clips of the piece on Amazon. It’s pretty powerful classical music written for band and choir.

Update: Here’s an interesting article about Arabic calligraphy and digital fonts.

This is a poster that I designed and illustrated for the University of Georgia Band Department. Several pieces on the concert are sea themed, so that definitely informed the design process.

This is the poster I did for the University Dance Company’s upcoming concerts on April 16th and 17th at 7:30 p.m. at the Lied Center of Kansas. If you haven’t seen them before, it’s definitely worth your while to make it over to see them.

They will be performing The Fugue by renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp.

From the press release:

The Fugue, originally choreographed in 1970, represents the start of a new direction in the Tharpian canon. Since its creation, this trio has become a Tharp classic, in which the rigorously plotted choreography draws audiences inside its intriguing workings. Set to the percussive beat of the dancer’s own feet on a miked floor, The Fugue‘s primary phrase of movement is a 20-count theme that one, two and/or three of its dancers variously execute by way of reversals, inversions, and resequencings, all shaded by individually graded “attacks and coordinations.”

Since I’m not a dancer, I wasn’t familiar with her work and in doing some research, I came across this video of her talking about motivation and creativity that I found pretty interesting.

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:

If you’re interested in hearing some great classical music, mark your calendars for October 22nd. As you can see, it’ll be a Gnojek family affair and the pieces are all very cool including works by Copland, Messaien, Gordon Goodwin, and Debussey. I did a series of 3 posters for Brian which included a fun nighttime photo shoot.