Division of Jazz Studies | College of Music

Recent UNT master's graduate Landon Mattox has been named a lecturer at Xinghai Conservatory in Guangzhou, China. He will teach Jazz History, Jazz Improvisation, Introduction to Jazz Styles, and Jazz Guitar.

Landon writes, "The jazz department is pretty much starting this coming term. XingHai has hired 3 other foreign lecturers. One from France will teach Jazz Composition and Theory, One from Germany will teach Latin Music and Classical Guitar and One from California will teach percussion."

Current graduate student and alto saxophonist Brian Girley, shown above playing with the Two O'Clock Lab Band at the 2006 Denton Arts & Jazz Festival, and his group will play at IAJE in Toronto in January, 2008. The rest of the group includes Evan Weiss, trumpet; Jiri Levicek, piano; Cooper Appelt, bass; Ross Pederson, drums.

Alumnus Antoniuk's group is reviewed here at DCist, a website about Washington, D.C.

The CD by the Chamber Jazz Ensemble, the ten-piece, Austin-based group led by Swindler and Smith, both alumni, is reviewed at ejazznews.com.

One O'Clock Band lead trumpeter Jason Levi has posted several videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/levitrumpet

FORJAK has just released a CD entitled "Look Between Us." Band members include Taku Saito, guitar; Jisun Choi, piano; Cooper Appelt, bass; Tony Spiro, drums.

The band is preparing for a 16-show tour of Japan and Korea in August.

The CD is available from SiTMoM Records. For more information see www.myspace.com/forjak.

Drummer Craig Pilo has been touring with Frankie Valli for the last two years and with Edgar
Winter for the past three months. He released a solo CD called "Just Play" featuring
Mitch Forman, Tom Kennedy and UNT alumni sax player Roman Dudok in May of 2007.
He did a recent interview for the Jersey Boys Blog. When not touring, Craig resides in Los Angeles and gigs with Angela Carole Brown. He played on her 2005 release called "The Slow Club," which also featured Bob Sheppard and Billy Childs. "All my work," Craig writes, "has stemmed from my time and education at UNT." For more information visit www.craigpilo.com.

Photos of the 2007 Combo workshop are available here.

Jonathan Beckett, an alumnus of the One O'Clock Band and a recent Master's graduate, will start work towards a D.M.A. in Jazz Performance at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign this fall. We wish him all the best on this new endeavor.

From the UNT press release by Carolyn Bobo:

"Joe Johnson, who received a bachelor’s degree in jazz in May, won second place in the 2007 International Society of Bassists Jazz Competition at Oklahoma City University June 4.

The society, founded in 1967, has about 3,000 members in more than 40 countries.

While at UNT, Johnson studied with Lynn Seaton, associate professor of music.

Johnson previously was selected as one of seven students worldwide to attend the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance. In the two-year graduate-level program beginning Aug. 23, he will perform around the world and learn from the masters of jazz. Formerly based at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the Monk Institute will be located at Loyola University in New Orleans this year to help revitalize the city after Hurricane Katrina."