OA2 Artist

...bold and creative and yet always swinging, nothing is static. Everything moves.
-Chuck Berg

Dan Gailey, saxophonist/composer/arranger, is the Director of Jazz Studies and Professor of Music at the University of Kansas, where he directs Jazz Ensemble I and Jazz Combo I and produces the annual KU Jazz Festival. He is also the director of the Midwestern Music Academy, KU's summer music program which includes the KU Jazz Workshop. Dan is the recipient of the 1996 IAJE Gil Evans Fellowship, an annual award which identifies an emerging jazz composer from an international field of candidates. Under his direction, the KU Jazz Studies Program has been the recipient of ten DownBeat Student Music Awards, including Jazz Ensemble I's award as Best College Big Band in the United States or Canada in 1997. Jazz Ensemble I has appeared under his direction at IAJE Conferences in New York City, Atlanta and Boston, the 1992 Mid-West Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago, and the 2008 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Dan holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Pacific Lutheran University and a Master of Music degree in Theory/Composition from the University of Northern Colorado. His compositions can be heard on numerous professional and college big band albums and are published exclusively through UNC Jazz Press. What Did You Dream?, his debut CD with the Dan Gailey Jazz Orchestra, will be released in July 2010 on Origin/OA2 Records and features all original compositions. Dan also produced the self-titled, 1994 debut CD recording of the Kansas City Boulevard Big Band and the follow-up 1996 CD by the same group, Stellar.

Dan has been active as a freelance saxophonist in Seattle, Denver and Kansas City, performing with Kevin Mahogany, Eric Marienthal, Red Richards, Claude "Fiddler" Williams, and many others, and has appeared as a guest artist/clinician throughout the United States and Canada, and in Sweden. He is an original member of the UNC/Greeley Jazz Festival All-Star Big Band, and has been commissioned twice to write new compositions for the band. Dan has directed numerous festival honor groups, including all-state jazz ensembles in California, Colorado, Washington, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Minnesota, and the 1996 NBA National Honors Jazz Ensemble.