Jazz: Dan Pugach Big Band
Dan Pugach is a 2025 Grammy Award-winning drummer and composer and a three-time recipient of the ASCAP Foundation Jazz Composer Award.
He is also a winner of the BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize/Manny Albam Commission as part of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop, and a Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Residency Program participant at the Kennedy Center (where he worked with Curtis Fuller, Nathan Davis and George Cables).
He was the featured drummer on the 2024 Grammy Award-winning album “How Love Begins,” co-produced by Nicole Zuraitis and Christian McBride. Dan is the leader of The Dan Pugach Nonet and the Dan Pugach Big Band, playing his original music and arrangements. The Nonet and Big Band tour regularly, and have played at Bird’s Eye Basel, The Zone in Tel Aviv, Blue Note Jazz, Birdland Jazz Club, The 55bar, Smalls Jazz Club, The Jazz Loft, The Jazz Estate, Stowe Jazz Festival, and esteemed Performing Arts Centers across the country.
Dan’s debut nonet album, “Plus One” (2018), was released on UNIT Records and charted on jazz radio in the top 20. The album includes Dan’s arrangement of Jolene (Dolly Parton), which was nominated for a Grammy Award (Best Arrangement, Instruments with Vocals) alongside vocalist Nicole Zuraitis.
Presented by New England Arts & Entertainment.