Walter Gwardyak – (AUTO)BIO

Growing up in New Haven, CT, as a child in a large Polish family, I heard classical music, as well as the popular music of the day, constantly on the radio at my parents’, grandparents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ houses. We lived for many years in a three-family house with our grandparents and other family members; my cousins and I were constantly exposed to popular music and jazz, along with Chopin and the Russians composers. Somewhere along the way, I heard Prokofiev’s  Peter and the Wolf for the first time and will never forget when I saw the work performed live with a ballet company.

There were always opportunities to play and sing at family and church gatherings – my first instrument was the accordion, and I often played with one of my uncles on his violin. In Poland, live music is highly prized and played at all kinds of gatherings, especially when people want to sing and dance. I also had the chance to play in my school drum corps and play the organ at our church.

In the 8th grade, my parents bought a piano which they crammed into the dining room, and I started piano lessons with Eddie Saranec, a local pianist and band leader who owned a music store and taught piano on the side. He focused on the American Song Book and helped his students find work in the dance bands and ensembles that abounded in those days when work was plentiful. I had an advantage as I played both piano and accordion.

Eddie himself was not an arranger, but he taught theory and the rudiments of arranging. I paid for my lessons myself with money I earned working for my grandfather in his soda shop at first and then with fees from performing with my band, the Guardsmen. When I went to college, I continued with my band which gave me the opportunity to write arrangements for all types of functions, including dances, weddings and parties. This led to playing piano and writing arrangements for the most successful New Haven bands, led by Pat Dorn and Arnold Most. I sometimes hired one of my cousins for the job of copying parts, as this was my least favorite aspect of writing music (now, of course we use computers). Writing and playing was a good way to experiment and learn as I went. Further studies with Don DeFalla and jazz improvisation lessons with Don Friedman added to my understanding of arranging and playing jazz. I practiced a lot, and, in the late 1960s, I was fortunate to be hired for a summer as pianist for the Buddy Rich band which was on tour with new repertoire from his latest CD, Mercy, Mercy, recorded at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

In the 1970s (through the 1990s actually), I performed with the New Haven-based Sonny Costanzo Orchestra. Sonny held a Sunday night series in various restaurants in Southern Connecticut and would bring in nationally-known jazz figures like Zoot Sims, George Coleman, Frank Foster, Clark Terry, Lou Donaldson, Jimmy Heath, Sal Nistico, Gerry Mulligan, Curtis Fuller, Pepper Adams, John Faddis and Phil Wilson.  As the piano player (in an excellent trio with Paul Brown on bass and Nick Forte on drums), I needed to be prepared for anything – whatever the visiting artist wanted - with no rehearsals.

Also, In the 1970s, while continuing to play in commercial bands in Connecticut and New York City, I created a rock band with horns and a singer, called the Underground Movement, which attracted the attention of the famous arranger from RCA, Hugo Winterhalter (a world-famous arranger who worked with the biggest US acts, like Eddie Fisher). He came to one of my band’s recording sessions and that led to my studying arranging with him over a summer. An example of something Winterhalter told me was to overwrite by which he meant fill all the measures all the time in the arrangement because it’s easier to take something out in the studio than to add something in at that point. He showed me what voicings to use for the instruments in the orchestra. Winterhalter wrote for RCA and hired the best jazz musicians, like Ron Carter. Earlier he had arranged music in the 1950s and 60s for Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Dinah Shore, Raymond Scott and Thornhill. At RCA he wrote for Harry Belafonte, Eddie Fisher, Billy Eckstine, Jimmy Heath, and the Ames Brothers. He became a role model for me, and I almost made it to Los Angeles but for a tragic incident.

Along the way, I got to know Marty Kugel, who had a recording studio in New Haven on Willow St. I took my band in for a recording session there, and he subsequently hired me to work on arrangements for his studio. When Marty moved to a bigger job at Polydor in New York City, he brought me along. One of the high points of that work was working with Herman’s Hermits, the English rock group, which came to New York to record – I did arrangements and played on several of their recordings. Unfortunately, just as Polydor was making it really big and moving to Los Angeles, Marty Kugel had a heart attack (in his late thirties) and died.

Staying on the East Coast and living in New York off and on, I arranged and conducted a stage show in 1984 at the Sands for Nick Apollo Forte, the star of the Woody Allen movie Broadway Danny Rose.  I accompanied him on ABC and CBS network TV, appearances. The arrangements for Nick Apollo Forte’s show were also played by the Tonight Show band for Nick’s West coast appearances. Also, in the 1980s, I worked with the off-Broadway touring company as the piano player in Ain’t Misbehavin’.

In the early 1990s, I began a new phase of my career, teaching in the College (Diploma) program at the Hartford (CT) Conservatory. For twenty years, between 1991 and 2011, I taught harmony, theory, arranging, jazz piano and improvisation and was, for ten of those years, the Dean of Music for the program. This was satisfying work – the students were responsive and practiced hard. Many of them became accomplished musicians, and some of them have had excellent achievements in composing and arranging. 

Also in the early 1990s, Mike Jones, a visionary trumpet player brought me in on a new venture he was starting – a big band manned by top players from New York to Boston which would perform jazz arrangements and serve as a composers’ forum. Rather than focus on commercial engagements, the band rehearsed weekly in a bar or restaurant and gave the occasional concert with guest artists. Since those early days, the New England Jazz Ensemble has produced 6 CDs, the latest released in April, 2018 – the jazz Peter and the Wolf. I wrote the through-composed piece based on the Prokofiev. My colleagues, Jeff Holmes and John Mastroianni, wrote other charts forming a suite of pieces with themes from the original. I serve as the musical director of the NEJE. Steve Bulmer is president of the board.

In the past 10 years, I have developed a nice relationship with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, I write arrangements for jazz pieces that they sometimes perform with the full orchestra, as well as provide arrangements for the Jazz and Strings program and the Jazz in the Schools program. I am also their in-house jazz pianist. I also do similar work with the Walingford Symphony, Waterbury Symphony and New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and last year, the Jackson (MI) Symphony Orchestra.