Results for "Chris Merz"

Chris Merz

Bob Washut Dodectet: Journey to Knowhere

by Jack Bowers
April 28, 2018

Even as experience is often the best teacher, so it is that the teacher often has the most useful experience. Bob Washut, who has been a teacher for roughly four decades, brings that experience and more to bear on Journey to Knowhere, preparing an ambrosial banquet for his twelve-member Dodectet whose main course consists of seven ...

UNI Jazz Band One: That Doesn't Even Look Like You

by Jack Bowers
December 6, 2017

For more than two decades, the University of Northern Iowa's Jazz Band One has been recognized as one of the country's leading undergraduate ensembles, on a par with such outstanding programs as those at the Universities of North Texas, Miami, Northern Colorado, Cincinnati, North and South Florida and Wisconsin-Eau Claire, among others. That Doesn't Even Look ...

Local Color

By Chris Merz

Label: Self Produced
Released: 2016
Track listing: Gerry’s Timepiece; Fee Fi Fo Fum; I Broke the Dam; Amur in Her Heart (for Oksana); Freedom Jazz Dance; Mirage; My Ship; The Egyptian.

University of Northern Iowa Jazz Band One 2014-15: Local Color

by Jack Bowers
February 9, 2016

In Local Color, the latest in a long series of splendid albums by the University of Northern Iowa's Jazz Band One, color is one of the primary ingredients; every number, in fact, is awash in radiant colors, from the prismatic opener, UNI alum Michael Conrad's “Gerry's Timepiece," to the chimerical closer, Curtis Fuller's dark-hued “The Egyptian." ...

UNI Jazz Band One: This Is the Band

by Jack Bowers
December 1, 2013

UNI is the University of Northern Iowa, which has had a respected Jazz Studies program for more than three decades, first under director Robert Washut and more recently under Chris Merz whose charges have recorded and released their tenth CD since Merz assumed the reins in 2002 (the band recorded eleven albums under Washut's guidance). Six ...

UNI Jazz Band: The Hard Way

by Jack Bowers
July 17, 2013

UNI stands for the University of Northern Iowa whose tradition of producing first-rate big-band recordings spans more than two decades, first under director Bob Washut and more recently under his successor, Chris Merz (The Hard Way is the twentieth album by the university's Jazz Band One in my library). This is a “semi-live" date on which ...