BIO
Czech born American pianist, composer, arranger, educator, music engineer, producer, and photographer Pavel Wlosok (*1973) started to play the piano when he was five years old. He received his classical education in piano performance and composition at the Janacek Conservatory of Music in OSTRAVA (1987 - 1993) in the classes of Mr. Zdenek Pecek and Mr. Igor Katajev, and at the Janacek Academy of Music (JAMU) in BRNO (1993 - 1995) in the class of Prof. Arnost Parsch (both Czech Republic). He obtained his bachelor and master degrees in jazz studies graduating cum laude at the University of North Texas (UNT) in DENTON, TX (1995 - 2000), where he studied composition with Prof. Cindy McTee, jazz piano with Prof. Dan Haerle, and classical piano with Prof. Adam Wodnicki.
While at the UNT, Pavel had served as pianist-arranger for the One O'clock Lab Band (his work is included on 4 CDs produced by this group, the last one featuring Canadian ECM artist Kenny Wheeler) and as teaching assistant of aural skills, music theory, and jazz piano before directing the Four O’clock Lab Band in his last year of studies. Pavel was also featured as a soloist with the UNT Wind Symphony (CD “Luminaries” under the direction of Eugene Corporon), and has toured Europe and North America as a pianist and composer. His first self-produced album as a leader is titled Long Journey (1997), and features his best friends from early North Texas years, such as saxophonists Tyler Kuebler and Wayne Delano, bassist Mike McGuirk, drummers Ed Soph and Rich Matschulat, and trumpeter Scott Harrell.
Between August 2000 and 2002 Pavel had served as the director of jazz studies at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri where his duties included directing the university's two big bands, coaching small groups, teaching jazz improvisation, and recording/supervising faculty recitals on campus. He also served as faculty advisor and active participant in the annual Phi Mu Alpha Jazz Festival. In 2016 the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina has awarded Pavel the title Professor of Music for his teaching, scholarly work, and service to the School of Music at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, where Pavel has taught full time since 2002. Besides his teaching and administrative duties Pavel has helped establish, organize, and participate in the annual WCU Jazz Festival, which targets the audiences of the Great Smoky Mountains region. Over nearly last two decades, many prominent artists have performed and shared the stage together with WCU music students and have helped these young talented individuals develop their musicianship skills by presenting lectures and masterclasses during each festival weekend. Pavel is an honorary member of Kappa Kappa Psi and Phi Mu Alpa.
During his years at JAMU, Pavel was one of the original founders of the Helpless Handful (1993 - 2000), a group of six young composers, whose compositions where performed in central Europe. An album by this group released in 2002 can be found on the Indies label. However, due to the many international engagements of its members, this group disbanded in early 2000. Pavel Wlosok's contemporary compositions have been performed mainly in Europe, USA, and Japan; including the World premiere of Reverberations for Marimba Solo, Volume II took place as part of the Janacek Philharmony Brno chamber music series in May 2003 (performed by Martin Oprsal, the head of percussion studies at JAMU in Brno, Czech Republic). Wlosok's String Quartet with Moravian influences in two parts entitled “Echoes from Moravia” was performed & recorded by the Czech Apollon String Quartet for the Czech National Radio in Prague in 2002. His latest efforts feature “Five Miniatures for Brass Quintet” premiered at Carnegie Hall in NYC in 2007 by the Smoky Mountain Brass Quintet and several dozen new compositions in jazz idiom featured on his most recent CD releases.
In 1999 Pavel has won a prestigious award given by the International Association of Jazz Educators named The Gil Evans Fellowship. This annual music award is given to just one recipient each year and covers both the field of Jazz composition and arranging. In April of 2006 Pavel won the James Dooley Teaching Excellence Award awarded to the best music teacher at Western Carolina University by music students, music faculty, and independent committee. Since 2002 WCU Jazz ensembles and combos under his direction have performed for more than twenty-five hundred K12 and high school students in North Carolina and surrounding states.
Between 1999 and 2005, Pavel and his wife Andrea Adamcova have been engaged in a unique series of solo piano recitals called Classical Meets Jazz, where Andrea specializes on the classical portion by performing Czech composers of the 20th and 21st century, such as Leos Janacek, Bohuslav Martinu, Lubos Fiser, or her husband Pavel Wlosok, as well as works of Alberto Ginastera, Chick Corea, and Robert Muczynski or works of the Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti. In the jazz portion of the series Pavel's focus turns to jazz standards as well as his original compositions. This series has been interrupted by the birth of their three daughters Victoria Sara, Natalia Michelle, and Karolina Neomi. Both Andrea and Pavel hope to be back performing together soon.
Since 2000, Pavel has been regularly invited to participate as lecturer and performer at the International Summer Jazz Workshop in Prague, organized annually by the Czech Jazz Society, where along with around dozen more European and American colleagues, he had been teaching concepts of solo piano improvisation, jazz harmony and styles, jazz arranging and composition, as well as coaching small groups and supervising students’ evening jam sessions. In 2001 Czech National TV Network filmed and broadcasted a documentary interview with Pavel about his original contemporary compositions and jazz music concepts. The Czech Radio station Vltava has regularly been broadcasting many of his compositions, both in jazz and in classical idioms. Since 2010, Pavel has also been invited a few times to lecture at Summer Jazz Workshop in Bratislava, Slovakia or Summer Jazz Big Band Workshop in Nysa, Poland. Pavel tours and performs in Europe each summer, including international festival appearances such as Prague Proms, Ostrava Jazz Festival, Krakow Jazz Festival, Festival Cesky Krumlov (with Gustav Brom Big Band) as well as clubs and music venues in central European cities of Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Krakow, Brno, Ostrava, Bratislava, Trnava, Piestany, Banska Bystrica, Zilina to name a few.
Pavel's 2006 live trio performance of “Jubilee Suite: Live at the Grey Eagle” with John Riley on drums and Mike McGuirk on bass was released on New Port Line label from the European Union in 2012 and started a 5-album relationship between the two parties. Pavel has since released four more CD albums for this label entitled “Czechmate” featuring Brooklyn based World-class saxophonist Joel Frahm (2013), “Alternate Reality” featuring Grammy Award saxophonist Donny McCaslin (2014), “Smile Baby Smile” featuring NYC based guitarist Paul Bollenback (2016) and his first solo jazz piano album entitled “Respectfully Yours” released in 2017. His latest 2018 jazz quartet album release entitled “Storyteller” featuring Miles Davis’ tenor saxophonist Rick Margitza and wonderful rhythm section from NYC of Mike McGuirk (acoustic bass) and Andrew Swift (drums) had culminated in a short tour of Europe including a major performance at the International JazzFest in Brno, Czech Republic.
Pavel, being a music producer himself, is also known for his audio mixing, and mastering skills. Over the last three decades, he has gradually built a dream home mixing/mastering studio, which features vintage tube and solid state studio gear made by the most famous analog producers such as German and Swiss Neumann, Telefunken, Studer, Japanese Sony, American Sontec, Manley, Danish Tube-Tech, or Austrian AKG. He uses industry standard AVID ProTools HD3 digital audio workstation and TC Electronic M6000 processing unit (with both reverb and mastering plugin suites) along with half-inch Studer A80 mastering reel to reel recorder with butterfly heads. His mixing and mastering skills can be heard on handful of European and US CD labels and albums recorded/released in Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Germany as well as on his own CD albums and project releases of the past decade. His mixing and mastering work on albums by Slovakian trumpeter Lukas Oravec has been awarded a first prize of Esprit twice in 2013 and 2016 (the only best Jazz album of the year award in Slovakia). Pavel has released over thirty jazz music videos under his name, which are easily accessible on his YOUTUBE channel online. His most watched videos have reached tens of thousands of views from fans around the Globe. To learn more about his audio engineering skills and type of work he is engaged with please visit the sonicADventures section of this website.
Lastly, to see an incomplete and ever growing list of artists Pavel has either performed with and/or recorded with, check out the dark tab of this page.