Czech born American pianist, composer, arranger, educator, music engineer, producer, and photographer Pavel Wlosok (*1973) started to play the piano when he was five years old. He received his classical education in piano performance and composition at the Janacek Conservatory of Music in OSTRAVA (1987 - 1993) in the classes of Mr. Zdenek Pecek and Mr. Igor Katajev, and at the Janacek Academy of Music (JAMU) in BRNO (1993 - 1995) in the class of Prof. Arnost Parsch (both Czech Republic). He obtained his bachelor and master degrees in jazz studies graduating cum laude at the University of North Texas (UNT) in DENTON, TX (1995 - 2000), where he studied composition with Prof. Cindy McTee, jazz piano with Prof. Dan Haerle, and classical piano with Prof. Adam Wodnicki.
While at the UNT, Pavel had served as pianist-arranger for the One O'clock Lab Band (his work is included on 4 CDs produced by this group, the last one featuring Canadian ECM artist Kenny Wheeler) and as teaching assistant of aural skills, music theory, and jazz piano before directing the Four O’clock Lab Band in his last year of studies. Pavel was also featured as a soloist with the UNT Wind Symphony (CD “Luminaries” under the direction of Eugene Corporon), and has toured Europe and North America as a pianist and composer. His first self-produced album as a leader is titled Long Journey (1997), and features his best friends from early North Texas years, such as saxophonists Tyler Kuebler and Wayne Delano, bassist Mike McGuirk, drummers Ed Soph and Rich Matschulat, and trumpeter Scott Harrell.
Between August 2000 and 2002 Pavel had served as the director of jazz studies at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri where his duties included directing the university's two big bands, coaching small groups, teaching jazz improvisation, and recording/supervising faculty recitals on campus. He also served as faculty advisor and active participant in the annual Phi Mu Alpha Jazz Festival. In 2016 the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina has awarded Pavel the title Professor of Music for his teaching, scholarly work, and service to the School of Music at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, where Pavel has taught full time since 2002. Besides his teaching and administrative duties Pavel has helped establish, organize, and participate in the annual WCU Jazz Festival, which targets the audiences of the Great Smoky Mountains region. Over the past sixteen seasons, many prominent artists have performed and shared the stage together with WCU music students and have helped these young talented individuals develop their musicianship skills by presenting lectures and masterclasses during each festival weekend. Pavel is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi and has actively participated in Phi Mu Alpa music activities while in Missouri and North Carolina.
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During his years at JAMU, Pavel was one of the original founders of the Helpless Handful (1993 - 2000), a group of six young composers, whose compositions where performed in central Europe. An album by this group released in 2002 can be found on the Indies label. However, due to the many international engagements of its members, this group disbanded in early 2000. Pavel Wlosok's contemporary compositions have been performed mainly in Europe and Japan; including the World premiere of Reverberations for Marimba Solo, Volume II took place as part of the Janacek Philharmony Brno chamber music series in May 2003 (performed by Martin Oprsal, the head of percussion studies at JAMU in Brno, Czech Republic). Wlosok's String Quartet with Moravian influences in two parts entitled “Echoes from Moravia” was recorded by the Czech Apollon String Quartet for the Czech National Radio in Prague in 2002. His latest efforts feature “Five Miniatures for Brass Quintet” premiered at Carnegie Hall in NYC in 2007 by the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet and several dozen new compositions in jazz idiom featured on his most recent CD releases.
In 1999 Pavel has won a prestigious award given by the International Association of Jazz Educators named The Gil Evans Fellowship. This annual music award is given to just one recipient each year and covers both the field of composition and arranging. In April of 2006 Pavel won the James Dooley Teaching Excellence Award awarded to the best music teacher at Western Carolina University by music students, music faculty, and independent three-member committee. Since 2002 WCU Jazz ensembles and combos under his direction have performed for more than twenty-five hundred K12 and high school students in North Carolina and surrounding states.
Since 1999, Pavel and his wife Andrea Adamcova have been engaged in a unique series of solo piano recitals called Classical Meets Jazz, where Andrea specializes on the classical portion by performing Czech composers of the 20th and 21st century, such as Leos Janacek, Bohuslav Martinu, Lubos Fiser, or her husband Pavel Wlosok, as well as works of Alberto Ginastera, Chick Corea, and Robert Muczynski or works by the baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti. In the jazz portion of the series Pavel's focus turns to jazz standards as well as his original compositions. This series has been temporarily interrupted by the birth of their three daughters Victoria Sara, Natalia Michelle, and Karolina Neomi. The series will get back on track again in a few years, once the family duties are no longer so time consuming.
Since 2000, Pavel has been regularly invited to participate as lecturer and performer at the International Summer Jazz Workshop in Prague, organized annually by the Czech Jazz Society, where along with around dozen more European and American colleagues, he had been teaching concepts of solo piano improvisation, jazz harmony and styles, jazz arranging and composition, as well as coaching small groups and supervising students’ evening jam sessions. In 2001 Czech National TV Network filmed and broadcasted a documentary interview with Pavel about his original contemporary compositions and jazz music concepts. The Czech Radio station Vltava has regularly been broadcasting many of his compositions, both in jazz and in classical idioms. Pavel has also appeared in a live John Adams jazz trio performance for the Texas TV Morning News on Channel 6. Since 2010, Pavel has also been invited to lecture at Summer Jazz Workshop in Bratislava, Slovakia or Summer Jazz Big Band Workshop in Nysa, Poland. Pavel tours and performs in Europe each summer, including international festival appearances such as Prague Proms, Ostrava Jazz Festival, Krakow Jazz Festival, Festival Cesky Krumlov (with Gustav Brom Big Band) as well as clubs and music venues in central European cities of Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Bratislava, Berlin, Trnava, Banska Bystrica, Zilina, Krakow, and Bielsko Biala.
Pavel's 2006 live trio project “Jubilee Suite: Live at the Grey Eagle” with John Riley on drums and Mike McGuirk on bass was released on New Port Line label from the European Union in 2012. Pavel has since released three more CD albums for this label entitled “Czechmate” featuring Brooklyn based World-class saxophonist Joel Frahm (2013), “Alternate Reality” featuring Grammy Award saxophonist Donny McCaslin (2014), and “Smile Baby Smile” featuring NYC based guitarist Paul Bollenback (2016). His first solo jazz piano album entitled “Respectfully Yours” was released in December 2017 on New Port Line label and his most recent jazz quartet album entitled “Storyteller” featuring Miles Davis’ tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza was released in March of 2018 on Lukas Oravec label (Czech Republic) along with a two-week long Central European tour culminating with an invitation to a prestigious international jazz festival in the Czech Republic entitled JazzFest Brno.
Pavel, being a music producer himself, is also known for his audio live tracking, mixing, and mastering skills. He owns a private recording studio, which features some of the most esoteric vintage tube and solid state studio gear made by the most famous analog producers such as German and Swiss Neumann, Telefunken, Studer, Japanese Sony, American Sontec, Manley, Danish Tube-Tech, or Austrian AKG. He uses AVID ProTools HD3 digital audio workstation and TC Electronic M6000 processing unit (with both reverb and mastering plugin suites) along with half-inch Studer A80 mastering reel to reel recorder with butterfly heads. His mixing and mastering skills can be heard on handful of European CD labels and albums recorded/released in Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Germany as well as on his own CD album and project releases in the past decade. His work on albums by Slovakian trumpeter Lukas Oravec has been awarded a prize of Esprit (best Jazz album of the year) twice in 2013 and 2016. Pavel has released over thirty jazz music videos under his name, which are easily accessible on his YOUTUBE channel online. His most watched videos have reached thousands of views from fans around the Globe. To learn more about his audio engineering skills and type of work he is engaged with please visit the sonicADventures section of this website.
Pavel has performed and/or recorded with many prominent jazz artists, such as (in alphabetical order) Bob Berg (credentials with Miles Davis), Randy Brecker (The Brecker Brothers), Paul Bollenback (Joey DeFrancesco Trio), Vince DiMartino (Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry), Dennis Dotson (Buddy Rich, Woody Herman), Jacob Duncan (Philip Glass Ensemble), John Ellis (Charlie Hunter, Ellis Marsalis), Jon Faddis (Lalo Schifrin, Paul Simon), Joel Frahm (Downbeat awarded star saxophonist), Danny Gottlieb (John Mclaughlin, Sting, Pat Metheny), Wycliffe Gordon (Wynton Marsalis), Tim Hagans (Stan Kenton), Fred Hamilton (UNT professor and multi-instrumentalist), Louis Hayes (John Coltrane & Horace Silver), Conrad Herwig (Frank Sinatra), Denis Irwin (Vanguard Jazz Orchestra), Ingrid Jensen (Maria Schneider Orchestra), Carly Johnson (Grammy nominated singer), Sheila Jordan (Charlie Parker), Victor Lewis (Duke Ellington, Stan Getz), Dave Liebman (Miles Davis), Joe Lovano (Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra), Rick Margitza (Miles Davis), Jason Marsalis (the Marsalis family), Donny McCaslin (Maria Schneider Orchestra, David Bowie), Janusz Muniak (legendary Polish tenor saxophonist), Ed Neumaster (Vanguard Jazz Orchestra), Dave Pietro (Toshiko Akiyoshi Orchestra), Paquito DeRivera (Dizzy Gillespie), Rufus Reid (Dexter Gordon), John Riley (Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, John Scofield), Bobby Shew (Tommy Dorsey, Buddy Rich), Gary Smulyan (Vanguard Jazz Orchestra), Ed Soph (Woody Herman, Joe Henderson), Harry Sokal (Vienna Arts Orchestra, Art Farmer), Byron Stripling (Wynton Marsalis), Eric Vaughn (Naked Jazz founder), Bobby Watson (Art Blakey Jazz Messengers), Kenny Wheeler (Keith Jarrett, John Taylor), and Eric Wyatt (David Liebman, Benito Gonzales).
(last updated April 2019)
Awards
The Gil Evans Fellowship winning composer/arranger awarded by the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) in 1999 for his composition "Reflections Suite" in three parts recorded by the One O'clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas on album "Lab 99".
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