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Dennis Gonzalez
Trumpeter Dennis González is a musician/composer, visual artist, broadcaster, writer, educator, linguist, and world traveler who has lived in Dallas for the past 33 years. He has recorded 30 CD's as a leader in diverse styles for Ayler Records, Stockholm's Silkheart Records, Berlin's Konnex Records, Poland's Gowi Records and Not Two Records, Brut Records in Ljubljana, and Clean Feed in Lisbon, as well as U.S. record companies Music and Arts (Berkeley), Koch Jazz (New York), Furthermore Recordings, and 8th Harmonic Breakdown (Chicago). He has also produced CD's on his own label in Dallas, daagnimRecords, since 1979. 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 20-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 2007, his jazz trio Yells at Eels, with sons Aaron and Stefan, will celebrate 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.
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Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, Dennis González, Clean Feed Records & Zoh Amba
by Maurice Hogue
I missed the original release by Fred Anderson and Hamid Drake of their From The River To The Ocean in 2007, but I'm catching up to this brilliant piece of work. The recording has been made available again on bandcamp.com. It's one of the features of this episode, as is O Life, O Light Vol. 1 from saxophonist Zoh Amba, a new star in the avant-garde world. Portugal's Clean Feed Records has released several new albums recently and you'll hear ...
Continue ReadingDennis Gonzalez: Ts'iibil Chaaltun
by Don Phipps
Dennis Gonzalez's trio, Ataraxia is comprised of trumpet (Gonzalez), bass (Drew Phelps), and percussion (Jagath Lakpriya), a mix of instruments that on the surface would alone suggest interesting music. And their double album, Ts'iibil Chaaltun, does not disappoint. There's a lot of desert in this music... large rocks that jut from the sand, dunes that stretch to the sunset, and a sense of vista. There's also the dance. Listen to “Yarn" and how it spins a web of ...
Continue ReadingYells at Eels: In Quiet Waters
by Karl Ackermann
It would seem that trumpeter Dennis González could easily find a place among the better-known artists in jazz were it not for a deep commitment to making generally undefinable music and priorities that include putting his academic and literary responsibilities out front. From the time of his first release as a leader, Air Light (Sleep Sailor) (Daagnim, 1979), González began toying with unusual amalgams like free improvisation and quasi-big band augmented with global dynamics. Much of the way González communicates ...
Continue ReadingDennis Gonzalez - Joao Paulo: So Soft Yet
by Glenn Astarita
Recorded in Portugal, Texas trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez and Portuguese keyboardist Joao Paulo offer a temperate pastoral setting, grounded on the duo's intake of regional sensibilities, ethnocentricities and emotive responses to cultural and spiritual components. With the effective use of space acting as a third instrument, the duo strikes an ethereal balance, spanning open-air panoramas, lush phrasings and resonating micro-themes via a largely unhurried gait. The musicians infuse variable moods amid Paulo's edgy and darkly woven electric keys to ...
Continue ReadingDennis Gonzalez Yells at Eels: Cape of Storms
by Glenn Astarita
Texas-based trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez's distinctive alliance of composition, structure and technique has blossomed into an elevated art form within the global jazz and improvisation circles. The trumpeter's compositions periodically spawn a few nods to Ornette Coleman's harmolodic methodology, largely founded within cyclical themes built on tonal shifts and punctuated rhythmic lines. The artist also incorporates massive attacks and uses density and space as additional instruments. On Cape of Storms, featuring his sons Aaron Gonzalez (bass), and Stefan Gonzalez (drums, percussion), ...
Continue ReadingDennis Gonzalez: A Matter Of Blood
by Mark Corroto
The reemergence of trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez continues. But, to quote an infamous rapper, “Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years." And Gonzalez has been making music for many years. Since he has lived the last three decades in Texas, the New York-centric jazz world tended to overlook him. With a flurry of activity of late, it is nearly impossible to ignore him.
He recorded for Sweden's Silkheart in the 1980s, and more recently Portugal's Clean ...
Continue ReadingDennis Gonzalez / Jnaana Septet: The Gift Of Discernment
by Nic Jones
Trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez has been responsible for some beautifully realized music on record in the past and this is a worthy addition to the canon. The music's full of that often difficult to define quality called life, shot through with a group conception which makes for a realization which is simultaneously both tight and loose.
The presence of percussionist Alvin Fielder provides a kind of link with the percussive workouts of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, and it's that aesthetic ...
Continue ReadingDennis Gonzalez Jnaana Septet - The Gift of Discernment (Not Two, 2008) ****1/2
Source:
All About Jazz
On the first, 15-minute long track, small percussion and gong sounds lead you into a hypnotic African-tinged music, a great bass vamp, with the piano playing some inviting chords, a female voice rejoicing after some ten minutes, accompanied by a background trumpet of twice 10 seconds. And yes, you're right, this is trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez for you : all for the music, even if it means a self-effacing approach. On this percussion-heavy band he is joined by Leena Conquest on ...
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Primary Instrument
Trumpet
Willing to teach
Intermediate to advanced
Photos
Music
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