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Mark Buselli

Mark Buselli is Director of Jazz Studies at Ball State University in Indiana.

Buselli's awards include a 2010-11 BSU College of Fine Arts Dean's Creative Arts Award, a Creative Renewal grant from the Indianapolis Arts Counci in 2005, a teacher of the year award in 2004 at Butler University, a Creative Vision award from NUVO in May of 2007, a top ten CD release of 2009 (Dec 09) in JAZZIZ magazine for "An Old Soul," and a top 100 CD of the decade (Jan 10) in Downbeat magazine for the Buselli/Wallarab release of "Basically Baker"

Buselli has over forty arrangements published for big bands, brass ensemble, and piano/trumpet. He has nine recordings out as a leader on the Owlstudios and OA2 record labels.

As a writer Mr. Buselli has been commissioned by Hendrick Muerkins, the American Pianists Association, The Indianapolis Brass ensemble and Western Michigan University.

He has performed with artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, Slam Stewart to Natalie Cole, Vic Damone and Ben Vereen. He has played for former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Buselli currently serves as Education Director of the Buselli-Wallerab Jazz Orchestra in Indianapolis where he has created numerous educational opportunities for over six thousand students. He is sponsored as an endorsing performing artist by Conn-Selmer, Inc.

Mr. Buselli graduated from Berklee School of music in Boston and received his MM in Jazz studies from Indiana University. While at Indiana he was awarded a Performers Certificate.


Tags

1
Album Review

Dave Stryker: Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies

Read "Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


If this recording were named “Dave Stryker Plays Bernard Hermann" (or Miklós Rózsa or Elmer Bernstein), well that would be just fine. They were all gifted composers who wrote film scores. The consensus would likely be that a musician like Stryker was hardly wasting his time, but Stryker With Strings Goes to the Movies hits the hopelessly middlebrow button. So how seriously anyone decides to take the results is anyone's guess. That would be a pity, ...

31
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Hidden Gems

Read "Hidden Gems" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The Hidden Gems alluded to by guitarist Brent Laidler on his third recording as leader comprise unique and seductive melodies and chord changes he uncovered while taking time during the Covid pandemic to skim through and sight-read some 14,000 tunes in 'fake books' and on his laptop computer, most of which never made it past that platform, even though many were written by well-known jazz artists. In his sortie, Laidler writes that he “began to come across ...

6
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Hidden Gems

Read "Hidden Gems" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


Guitarist Brent Laidler has released mainstream jazz albums infused with a cheerful attitude throughout his career. They tend to feature all original tunes, but unlike most jazz releases featuring (cursed with?) the All-Original Syndrome, his tunes are catchy, accessible, and sometimes even mood-enhancing. Given that hundreds--if not thousands--of small group jazz albums are released each year, it can be challenging to find a distinctive feature to hang onto when confronted with a new one. Laidler is canny enough to realize ...

27
Album Review

Dave Stryker: Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies

Read "Stryker with Strings Goes to the Movies" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Guitarist Dave Stryker, who is at home in any venue, Goes to the Movies on this ambitious album, wherein his working quartet is greeted by a thirty-piece orchestra with strings and four talented guest artists. There are some gems here--Henry Mancini's “Dreamsville," Rodgers and Hammerstein's “Edelweiss," Ennio Morricone's theme from Cinema Paradiso among them--and a few pleasant surprises as well. Songs in the latter group include “You Only Live Twice," from the James Bond film of that ...

19
Album Review

Buselli / Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: The Gennett Suite

Read "The Gennett Suite" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


This is where music for mass consumption--recorded music--started, in Richmond, Indiana, in the 1920s, in a piano factory by the railroad tracks in a glacier-carved gorge. Established in 1887, in the beginning Starr Pianos' bread and butter was pianos, but they branched out to selling other instruments and eventually photographs and records--their own records, recorded in the piano factory, taking breaks in the process when a train came by. At first, they called their recording side of the business Starr ...

6
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You

Read "Wouldn't Be Here Without You" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


Stan Getz once said of the best bossa players that they could swing hard without appearing to try. It is also obvious that one of the few good things to come out of the Covid pandemic has been music intended to calm things down a bit. For example, John Pizzarelli's Better Days Ahead(Ghostlight Records, 2021), but there are others as well. If you take “swing" and “calm" and combine them, you end up with Brent Laidler's enjoyable and melliflous recording. ...

2
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You

Read "Wouldn't Be Here Without You" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


As we slip deeper into the twenty-first century, jazz is a very broad church indeed, an umbrella term referring to dozens of sub-genres and styles. Even with all those tags and labels at our disposal, however, sometimes an album can be a little hard to pigeonhole. Guitarist/arranger/composer Brent Laidler's latest album, Wouldn't Be Here Without You, seems simple enough to categorize at first: it is straight-ahead, small combo mainstream jazz, right? But listen a while and you'll discover that the ...

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Stryker with Strings...

Strikezone Records
2025

buy

Hidden Gems

Self Produced
2024

buy

The Gennett Suite

Patrois Records
2023

buy

Wouldn't Be Here...

Self Produced
2022

buy

No Matter Where Noir

Self Produced
2017

buy

An Old Soul

W.E.R.F.
2009

buy

Dippermouth Blues

From: The Gennett Suite
By Mark Buselli

Untold Stories

From: Untold Stories
By Mark Buselli

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