Dennis Gonzalez

Trumpeter DENNIS GONZALEZ is a musician/composer, visual artist, broadcaster, writer, educator, linguist, and world traveler who has lived in Dallas for the past 31 years. He has recorded 27 CD's as a leader in the jazz and church music styles for Stockholm's Silkheart Records, Berlin's Konnex Records, Poland's Gowi Records, Brut Records in Ljubljana, and Clean Feed in Lisbon, as well as U.S. record companies Music and Art (Berkeley), Koch Jazz (New York), and 8th Harmonic Breakdown (Chicago). He has also produced CD's on his own label in Dallas, daagnimRecords, since 1979. He began playing music and singing in the Southern Baptist church, under his mother's teaching. His international career began when he played and recorded at his home studio in Dallas with musicians in town to play at Ft. Worth’s Caravan of Dreams: John Purcell, Prince Lasha, John Blake, Ronnie Burrage, Charlie Burnham, Warren Benbow, Pheeroan ak Laff, and Kelvyn Bell. In New Orleans, he began a 22-year association that continues today with Alvin Fielder, Tim Green, Kidd Jordan, Marlon Jordan, Elton Heron, and Clyde Kerr, Jr. In California, he connected musically with Sunship Theus, Henry Franklin, John Carter, Michael Sessions, Nels Cline, and Alex Cline. His European connections grew as he began traveling with his music and visual art, playing with Louis Moholo, Elton Dean, Keith Tippett, Kazimierz Jonkisz, Sidsel Endresen, Nils Petter Molvaer, John Stevens, Dudu Pukwana, Paul Rogers, Mark Sanders, Mark Hewins, Jim Dvorak, Lado Jaksa, and Ernest Mothle. He has performed in festivals, concerts, workshops, and television and radio programs throughout Asia, Europe, Central America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, and in most major American cities for the past 24 years, playing and recording with luminaries such as Charles Brackeen, Frank Lowe, Andrew Cyrille, Malachi Favors, Roy Hargrove, Fred Hopkins, Oliver Lake, Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, Henry Grimes, Ahmed Abdullah, Mark Helias, Ellery Eskelin, George Cartwright, Sabir Mateen, Roy Campbell, Jr., Olu Dara, Douglas Ewart, Hamid Drake, Mike Thompson, and many more. His more recent forays into the New England jazz scene have been particularly productive, gigging and recording with Joe Morris, Charlie Kohlhase, Nate McBride, Luther Gray, and Timo Shanko. For a decade, he was a vibrant part of the Austin creative music scene, associated with Vinnie Golia, Wayne Peet, Tina Marsh, Alex Coke, Ken Filiano, and the Creative Opportunity Orchestra for which he was commissioned to write several full-length pieces. In 2006, his jazz trio Yells at Eels, with sons Aaron and Stefan, is celebrating its eighth year of existence. He produced radio programs for National Public Radio affiliate KERA-FM in Dallas for 21 years and has worked to produce programs at UNT's KNTU-FM in Denton and Radio Student in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he also led three different incarnations of his Ljubljana New Music Workshop Orchestra, which boasts some 55 alumni, and which was led by Peter Kowald after 1985. His Dallas productions "Miles Out", "The New Jazz Review", "The Literary Review", "Pirate Radio", and Eduardo Mata's "The Music of Hispano-America" (he was music consultant to the late conductor Mata) have all garnered international acclaim. González is a renowned visual artist with exhibits around the world from 1978 to the present, as well as an accomplished writer, with two books to his credit: Xi and Cu, both bilingual editions of his travel poems. His writings have appeared in various anthologies. Dennis González is fluent in 6 languages, has taught in Texas public schools for 30 years, and has also held residencies in multidisciplinary subjects at area universities, as well as European universities and high schools in Europe, Central America, and the U.S. He currently teaches at North Dallas High School and Spence Middle School, specializing in Tejano/Mariachi/Latino Music Studies as well as Spanish, French, and Jazz Studies. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.