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Mark Buselli

Mark Buselli is Director of Jazz Studies at Ball State University in Indiana.

Buselli's awards include a 2010-11 BSU College of Fine Arts Dean's Creative Arts Award, a Creative Renewal grant from the Indianapolis Arts Counci in 2005, a teacher of the year award in 2004 at Butler University, a Creative Vision award from NUVO in May of 2007, a top ten CD release of 2009 (Dec 09) in JAZZIZ magazine for "An Old Soul," and a top 100 CD of the decade (Jan 10) in Downbeat magazine for the Buselli/Wallarab release of "Basically Baker"

Buselli has over forty arrangements published for big bands, brass ensemble, and piano/trumpet. He has nine recordings out as a leader on the Owlstudios and OA2 record labels.

As a writer Mr. Buselli has been commissioned by Hendrick Muerkins, the American Pianists Association, The Indianapolis Brass ensemble and Western Michigan University.

He has performed with artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Heath, Slam Stewart to Natalie Cole, Vic Damone and Ben Vereen. He has played for former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Buselli currently serves as Education Director of the Buselli-Wallerab Jazz Orchestra in Indianapolis where he has created numerous educational opportunities for over six thousand students. He is sponsored as an endorsing performing artist by Conn-Selmer, Inc.

Mr. Buselli graduated from Berklee School of music in Boston and received his MM in Jazz studies from Indiana University. While at Indiana he was awarded a Performers Certificate.


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19
Album Review

Buselli / Wallarab Jazz Orchestra: The Gennett Suite

Read "The Gennett Suite" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


This is where music for mass consumption--recorded music--started, in Richmond, Indiana, in the 1920s, in a piano factory by the railroad tracks in a glacier-carved gorge. Established in 1887, in the beginning Starr Pianos' bread and butter was pianos, but they branched out to selling other instruments and eventually photographs and records--their own records, recorded in the piano factory, taking breaks in the process when a train came by. At first, they called their recording side of the business Starr ...

6
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You

Read "Wouldn't Be Here Without You" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


Stan Getz once said of the best bossa players that they could swing hard without appearing to try. It is also obvious that one of the few good things to come out of the Covid pandemic has been music intended to calm things down a bit. For example, John Pizzarelli's Better Days Ahead(Ghostlight Records, 2021), but there are others as well. If you take “swing" and “calm" and combine them, you end up with Brent Laidler's enjoyable and melliflous recording. ...

2
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You

Read "Wouldn't Be Here Without You" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


As we slip deeper into the twenty-first century, jazz is a very broad church indeed, an umbrella term referring to dozens of sub-genres and styles. Even with all those tags and labels at our disposal, however, sometimes an album can be a little hard to pigeonhole. Guitarist/arranger/composer Brent Laidler's latest album, Wouldn't Be Here Without You, seems simple enough to categorize at first: it is straight-ahead, small combo mainstream jazz, right? But listen a while and you'll discover that the ...

24
Album Review

Brent Laidler: Wouldn't Be Here Without You

Read "Wouldn't Be Here Without You" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Although mostly unnamed, those honored on Indiana-based guitarist Brent Laidler's Wouldn't Be Here Without You are friends, mentors and fellow musicians who have offered encouragement and support on his spiritual and musical journey through life, several of whom comprise the sextet on Laidler's second album as leader. Besides playing guitar (and repairing them by day), Laidler wrote and arranged all of the album's ten numbers, which are rhythmically strong and melodically pleasing. Some are vaguely reminiscent of ...

6
Album Review

Brent Laidler: No Matter Where Noir

Read "No Matter Where Noir" reviewed by Patrick Burnette


Some jazz albums are notable solely for the well-known personnel featured. These recordings excite interest based on name recognition alone. Even if albums like this lack a coherent vision, fans are willing to pick them up just to hear their favorite players at work. In contrast, composer/guitarist Brent Laidler's No Matter Where Noir , while featuring top-shelf playing and soloing, focuses on creating a cohesive and entertaining vibe throughout. It's a “sum greater than the parts" album, and ...

350
Album Review

Mark Buselli: An Old Soul

Read "An Old Soul" reviewed by Woodrow Wilkins


Big band music never really gets old. That is to say that it doesn't have to sound like it's something from the past and ought to stay there. In the hands of an effective composer, arranger and band leader like Mark Buselli, the swinging sound of large horn sections is bound to please. Buselli, who also plays trumpet, is director of Jazz Studies at Ball State University. Since 1994, he has teamed up with trombonist Brent Wallarab to ...

89
Album Review

Mark Buselli and Claude Sifferlen: Take the Mitsu

Read "Take the Mitsu" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


The flugelhorn has such a smooth, rounded tone that it can impart the warmest and most mellow ambiance to any instrument. When that recording is a piano duet, that warmth and mellowness are magnified dramatically. Warmth, not heat. While a virtuoso’s instrument, the flugelhorn is also a specialty instrument. In the hands of Mark Buselli, one can see why.

After forging a relationship with pianist Claude Sifferlen by playing a regular gig at Indianapolis’ Chatterbox, Mr. Buselli has ...

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

The Gennett Suite

Patrois Records
2023

buy

Wouldn't Be Here...

Self Produced
2022

buy

No Matter Where Noir

Self Produced
2017

buy

An Old Soul

W.E.R.F.
2009

buy

Take the Mitsu

OA2 Records
2004

buy

Happenstance

Midcoast Music
2000

buy

Dippermouth Blues

From: The Gennett Suite
By Mark Buselli

Untold Stories

From: Untold Stories
By Mark Buselli

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