Brad's profile
2018 Successful Artist Award Bio:
Brad Gunson understands the power of persistance and knows that giving up is the surest way to fail! He loves Baltimore. He loves Maryland. He also loves other things including irreverent humor as a form of coping with reality. When he writes bios, he makes sure to make the reader feel as uncomfortable as he does when writing. He extemporaneusly includes previous biographical writing from the last four years of writing Baker Artists Portfolio submissions, because in addition to doing many things in 2018, he knows that one day you will be able to scroll pass this and all previous bios like a long, boring "terms of use" contract. ACCEPT.
2017 Unsuccessful Artist Award Bio:
Brad Gunson is a musician, teacher, producer, bandleader, and satirist who leads several performing and recording bands, performs as an instrumentalist for others' working bands, promotes live events, teaches publicly and privately, and produces creative works. He received a high school diploma at Arundel Senior High School in Anne Arundel County, MD, a Bachelor in Music in Jazz and Commercial Music at Towson University in Baltimore, MD, and a Masters in Jazz Studies at New York University in New York City. He lives and works in Baltimore City, but has been active in communities around Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and cities such as New York City, NY and Los Angelos, CA. He works in the dilapidated bars of North Avenue and the mansions of old New England, at European countryside jazz festivals and in the shiny palaces of Abu Dhabi. He teaches children, adults, adults who don't want to grow up, children who grow up too fast, inner children, and adults who still live with their parents. He is currently working on several original and popular recording projects, editing a short surrealist, musical, comedic documentary about Baltimore, continually studying and improving his performing, photography, audio, and video skills, and regularly producing creatively themed live events in Baltimore and New York City. He also acknowledges his own lack of competency in understanding the etiquette of writing biographies and the incalculable risks associated with a of a bad sense of humor.
2016 Unsuccessful Artist Award Bio:
Growing up along the rural roads of Anne Arundel County as a middle child in a large family led by a second generation glacier gave me enough time, motivation, and inspiration to gravitate towards a life in the creative realm. I remember exploring all kinds of things: Camping, Boy Scouts, Music, Drawing, Comics, Video Games, Film, Television, Computers, and many other pursuits, pastimes, and creative endeavors. My first private music teacher in high school, who helped me prepare for a college level audition in my 11th year, called me "a dilettante". I had to look that word up.
I barely got accepted to Towson University after also auditioning at the University of Maryland for the three trombonists of the National Symphony, who looked at me trying to understand why I wasted their time auditioning playing along with a cassette tape of a jazz song. I had similar rejection at James Madison University after my father drove his fourth son four hours into the Appalachian Mountains. I began my formal music training under probation from the Music Education Department at Towson beyond excited to leave home and begin my path to becoming a full time musician, a goal I would achieve, but continuously evaluate for the rest of my adult life.
I spent five years as an undergraduate learning lots of rules about old music (and many other topics) from people older and more experienced than me. I dug in hard, trying to learn about music from the perspective of recordings and history, but also the practical; playing as much for money and free (and paying to play too!) on any instrument, medium, and style available to me. I worked all kinds of odd jobs throughout that time and after graduating. I eventually became known enough as an instrumentalist, bandleader, and teacher to make a meager living for several years in Baltimore and Washington DC, before packing up and moving to New York City for three years.
There I earned an expensive advanced Jazz Studies degree at New York University, played relentlessly within the underground music scene, and traveled abroad to Europe and the Middle East several times as a working sideman and student playing alongside or behind or underneath the famous NYU faculty and administrators. The University hired me as an adjunct music teacher for two years, one of my most successful musical bands was founded during that time, and was engaged in countless artistic endeavors. I moved around the East Coast for a few years after that, sometimes by choice, sometimes chasing work, and also to support my now wife who also studied in Philadelphia.
In 2014 I bought a home in Baltimore City. I secured enough teaching, performing, music industry work to keep me there for a while. Baltimore has always treated me fair, or at least, let me negotiate its landscape. Its almost impossible for me to catalog or fully explain the work I have done up to this point. Beyond live performances, recordings in both audio and video, private music instruction, non profit work, for profit work, non musical work, writing, producing, and promotion for myself and others, there is a trail. It has success, failure, and many other things that just exist. I have written and rewritten my "Bio" many times, but I still have a lot to write. Even though 2015 was a busy, fulfilling year, much of it was planting seeds to grow in 2016 and beyond.
2015 unsuccessful Baker Artist Award Bio:
Brad Gunson began making music as just a fun thing to do as a child among friends. After twenty some years, he continues making music as means to be engaged positively with the world, communicate things which can not be expressed otherwise, and make a difference in the lives of others. The casual childhood discovery evolved into the vocation that speaks the universal language, the facilitator to travel to places beyond home, and continual introduction to new people. He teaches this ancient language as means to survive. He performs this social art as a way to express himself and ideas way beyond self. He composes and improvises within the traditions and tries to understand where and why and how the traditions can evolve. He also just tries and fails and succeeds and wins and loses and learns and struggles and grapples and tries to crack a joke every once and while.
What does Brad Gunson do? He has been seen playing trombone, selling tickets, stomping on guitar pedals, talking into microphones, editing video, splicing reel to reel tape, plugging in microphones, lifting speaker cabinets, writing emails, trying to fix his website from not loading correctly, posting flyers, playing high notes, singing wrong notes, applying for grants, writing bios, getting in peoples' way, forgetting to call his Mother, going to Board meetings, and trying to convince people the value of art. He also wishes he could just explain his life with a few simpler words, such as "renowned classical pianist" or "landscape painter" or "ballet dancer".
Brad Gunson recently settled into a home in Baltimore, MD where he has been active as performer, teacher, booking agent, promoter, composer, video and audio engineer, Baltimore Jazz Alliance Board member, student, singer, and multi-instrumentalist after moving around Maryland, Washington DC, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. He studied music formally at Towson University and New York University. He has produced countless original and arranged material distributed throughout the world both live and recorded. He also has been a music teacher for over 10 years.
Brad Gunson understands the power of persistance and knows that giving up is the surest way to fail! He loves Baltimore. He loves Maryland. He also loves other things including irreverent humor as a form of coping with reality. When he writes bios, he makes sure to make the reader feel as uncomfortable as he does when writing. He extemporaneusly includes previous biographical writing from the last four years of writing Baker Artists Portfolio submissions, because in addition to doing many things in 2018, he knows that one day you will be able to scroll pass this and all previous bios like a long, boring "terms of use" contract. ACCEPT.
2017 Unsuccessful Artist Award Bio:
Brad Gunson is a musician, teacher, producer, bandleader, and satirist who leads several performing and recording bands, performs as an instrumentalist for others' working bands, promotes live events, teaches publicly and privately, and produces creative works. He received a high school diploma at Arundel Senior High School in Anne Arundel County, MD, a Bachelor in Music in Jazz and Commercial Music at Towson University in Baltimore, MD, and a Masters in Jazz Studies at New York University in New York City. He lives and works in Baltimore City, but has been active in communities around Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and cities such as New York City, NY and Los Angelos, CA. He works in the dilapidated bars of North Avenue and the mansions of old New England, at European countryside jazz festivals and in the shiny palaces of Abu Dhabi. He teaches children, adults, adults who don't want to grow up, children who grow up too fast, inner children, and adults who still live with their parents. He is currently working on several original and popular recording projects, editing a short surrealist, musical, comedic documentary about Baltimore, continually studying and improving his performing, photography, audio, and video skills, and regularly producing creatively themed live events in Baltimore and New York City. He also acknowledges his own lack of competency in understanding the etiquette of writing biographies and the incalculable risks associated with a of a bad sense of humor.
2016 Unsuccessful Artist Award Bio:
Growing up along the rural roads of Anne Arundel County as a middle child in a large family led by a second generation glacier gave me enough time, motivation, and inspiration to gravitate towards a life in the creative realm. I remember exploring all kinds of things: Camping, Boy Scouts, Music, Drawing, Comics, Video Games, Film, Television, Computers, and many other pursuits, pastimes, and creative endeavors. My first private music teacher in high school, who helped me prepare for a college level audition in my 11th year, called me "a dilettante". I had to look that word up.
I barely got accepted to Towson University after also auditioning at the University of Maryland for the three trombonists of the National Symphony, who looked at me trying to understand why I wasted their time auditioning playing along with a cassette tape of a jazz song. I had similar rejection at James Madison University after my father drove his fourth son four hours into the Appalachian Mountains. I began my formal music training under probation from the Music Education Department at Towson beyond excited to leave home and begin my path to becoming a full time musician, a goal I would achieve, but continuously evaluate for the rest of my adult life.
I spent five years as an undergraduate learning lots of rules about old music (and many other topics) from people older and more experienced than me. I dug in hard, trying to learn about music from the perspective of recordings and history, but also the practical; playing as much for money and free (and paying to play too!) on any instrument, medium, and style available to me. I worked all kinds of odd jobs throughout that time and after graduating. I eventually became known enough as an instrumentalist, bandleader, and teacher to make a meager living for several years in Baltimore and Washington DC, before packing up and moving to New York City for three years.
There I earned an expensive advanced Jazz Studies degree at New York University, played relentlessly within the underground music scene, and traveled abroad to Europe and the Middle East several times as a working sideman and student playing alongside or behind or underneath the famous NYU faculty and administrators. The University hired me as an adjunct music teacher for two years, one of my most successful musical bands was founded during that time, and was engaged in countless artistic endeavors. I moved around the East Coast for a few years after that, sometimes by choice, sometimes chasing work, and also to support my now wife who also studied in Philadelphia.
In 2014 I bought a home in Baltimore City. I secured enough teaching, performing, music industry work to keep me there for a while. Baltimore has always treated me fair, or at least, let me negotiate its landscape. Its almost impossible for me to catalog or fully explain the work I have done up to this point. Beyond live performances, recordings in both audio and video, private music instruction, non profit work, for profit work, non musical work, writing, producing, and promotion for myself and others, there is a trail. It has success, failure, and many other things that just exist. I have written and rewritten my "Bio" many times, but I still have a lot to write. Even though 2015 was a busy, fulfilling year, much of it was planting seeds to grow in 2016 and beyond.
2015 unsuccessful Baker Artist Award Bio:
Brad Gunson began making music as just a fun thing to do as a child among friends. After twenty some years, he continues making music as means to be engaged positively with the world, communicate things which can not be expressed otherwise, and make a difference in the lives of others. The casual childhood discovery evolved into the vocation that speaks the universal language, the facilitator to travel to places beyond home, and continual introduction to new people. He teaches this ancient language as means to survive. He performs this social art as a way to express himself and ideas way beyond self. He composes and improvises within the traditions and tries to understand where and why and how the traditions can evolve. He also just tries and fails and succeeds and wins and loses and learns and struggles and grapples and tries to crack a joke every once and while.
What does Brad Gunson do? He has been seen playing trombone, selling tickets, stomping on guitar pedals, talking into microphones, editing video, splicing reel to reel tape, plugging in microphones, lifting speaker cabinets, writing emails, trying to fix his website from not loading correctly, posting flyers, playing high notes, singing wrong notes, applying for grants, writing bios, getting in peoples' way, forgetting to call his Mother, going to Board meetings, and trying to convince people the value of art. He also wishes he could just explain his life with a few simpler words, such as "renowned classical pianist" or "landscape painter" or "ballet dancer".
Brad Gunson recently settled into a home in Baltimore, MD where he has been active as performer, teacher, booking agent, promoter, composer, video and audio engineer, Baltimore Jazz Alliance Board member, student, singer, and multi-instrumentalist after moving around Maryland, Washington DC, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. He studied music formally at Towson University and New York University. He has produced countless original and arranged material distributed throughout the world both live and recorded. He also has been a music teacher for over 10 years.
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