Greg Utech - Drums and other oddities...

Recent accolades:

2006 "Top Ten" list WDET fm in Detroit.

2007 "Semi finalist" UK Songwriting Contest.

2007 Acid Jazz Magazine Interview.

2007 Compilation Disc Acid Jazz Magazine.

2006 "Featured Artist" New Orleins Radio.

2007 Over 15 "Forwards" to TAXI Clientele.

I have been a musician for over 25 years in the Detroit area. Mostly on drums, but I can "mingle" with most any instrument. I have released three discs to date and I appeared on Rick Matle's CD "Ears Wide Shut." I just realeased my third disc, "Concrete Jungles."

I started playing drums almost 30 years ago, and saxophone almost 40 years. Music has been a large part of my life for as long as I can remember. Phil Kelly has always been my mentor. We met shortly after high school and started to play in bands together. "Providence" was the first band. (The full name was "Newlywed Providence Blowtorch Aliens and the names went downhill from there.)

The most memorable musical experience I have had was when Ralph Valdez, a DJ from WDET in Detroit, called and said he loved my disc and would play it on his next show. We had a party that night and it felt as though a dream had come true. My music has also been aired on the Jon Moshier program, and "The Listening Room" with host Chris Felcyn. As well as KAOS fm in Olympia Wa, Tomorrow Jazz, aTTeNTIoN sPaN raDIO, IPM.com, And reached the feature page on New Orleans Radio.com

I worked in professional theater for 18 years at Meadow Brook Theater at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. From set design to writing the score for the 1993 production of Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde.

Today, I play weekly in a jazz trio, and spend a lot of time recording. I'm currently reacquainting myself with the tenor sax as well.

My favorite activities include painting large abstracts in acrylic ( over 30 shows to date including, Meadowbrook art Gallery, The Edsel Ford Grounds, Paint Creek center for the arts, Inn Seasons Cafe, to name a few ) I also have a full time "day job," a beautiful wife, and an awesome black Lab named Casey. That leaves little time for television, thank God!!!

SOUNDBITE CLIENT PROJECTS:

- 2004 Audi of America CD-ROM

- 2004 Short film festival score

- 2003 Saturn Ion training video

Greg is also a member of the songwriters guild of America. And is listed in the Library of Congress.

Silvia Turrin - ACID JAZZ MAGAZINE 11-07 (Nov 23, 2007)

posted November 23rd at 10:06am

Acid Jazz magazine interview for November issue. Translated from; Italian to English Greg Utech Nu metropolitan Jazz Reaching to the electronics, the city sonorous cacophonies and the immense patrimony soul-jazz of Detroit, the composer and polistrumentista American return with a third album loaded with rhythms experience them. Light and cerebral music that opens new horizons. Electronic pulsations, city distortion of radio waves natched in the ether, rhythms and then a sweeping avalanche and being involved of atmospheres nu jazz. This, shortly, the musical world modeled with visceral passion from Greg Utech, songwriter and polistrumentista grown between album of Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Stevie Wonder, in order to only cite some of its points of reference. It has been above all its city born them, Detroit, to project it towards those atmospheres underground particularly legacies to the tradition soul-jazz. Those metropoli, are known, have been one forge of great artists thanks to the Motown label and have continued sfornare talents, like Amp Fiddler and Dwele. Encircled from this cultural ferment, Utech, also leaving from these influences, an artistic distance has elaborated originates them in which the past it melts with the present and the warm sound, authentic, harmonious of instruments which sax, bugle, bottom and keyboards amalgam with sonorous voices and synthetic constructions. In these vent' years, passed also to realize teatrali productions, it has tried to find an own formula where to be able to make to cohabit and to converse soul, jazz and experimentations of vanguard natched from the pioneering jobs of the istrionico Brian Eno. Ambitious objective that ours it is trying to realize as it proposes its album. Sin from the debut with Shortwave (2000) has forged sonorous acclimatizations loaded of innovation, of rhythms techno and sonorità jazzy. A style that appears more compiutamente elaborated with recent Concrete Jungles (2006), where the noises of the giungla metropolitan comes attenuated from the warm harmonies of stamp soul. Coadiuvato from a team of valid musicians, between which Rick Matle (guitar), Walt Szymanski (bugle) and Dennis Sheridan (percussions, berimbau), Greg Utech confirmation the versatilità like arranger, composer and polistrumentista (sax, keyboards, bugle, percussions, bottom, guitar), thanks to a job musically more elaborated regarding the previous ones, as same it has emphasized. “With Concrete Jungles I have intentional to ahead complete an ulterior step regarding Spank, my according to disc. Task that is easier to produce the successive job, since the ideas turn out clearer. Every new plan is always and however a challenge. My third party I have conceived cd it like rising of concept album, formed from several traces, but in the entirety oriented towards an only direction. And in my way to compose the fluidity of the rhythm it is always centers them”. Like songwriter, s' it inspires beyond that to the turbinio metropolitan, also to the creative world of the art. “Loving the painting, every time that I compose I try to imagine and to construct a tavolozza colorful of sounds. With Concrete Jungles, I have tried sedurre the listener with I interlace of several musical shadings that I have reached from travel documentary, but also from the distortions of the frequencies radio. From here the title it that it reveals a melting pot not only sonorous. This passion final of the UK Songwriting Contest), wrapped from the warmth sussulti of the sax.manifesta through the places setting some of mine cd. I have many friends who work in the field of the visual limbs and try to be involved them in my musical plans. The artwork it is always in simbiosi with the mood total of the disc”. Distributed from the label from created same he, the Soundbite Records, Concrete Jungles Sheila Landis sees the participation of the talentosa vocalist, than with its timbriche abilities to jazzistico stamp impreziosisce “Fever”. Between the more representative traces we signal “City to City”, charming connubio of melodia and rhythms jazz, selected not to case like sample for ours compilation, and the brano omonimo to the disc (arrived among other things in seeds Silvia Turrin - ACID JAZZ MAGAZINE 11-07 (Nov 23, 2007)