Mr. Frank Gagliardi

Frank Gagliardi,
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by Patrick Gaffey Jazz lovers in Southern Nevada owe Frank Gagliardi plenty.He founded the world-renowned UNLV Jazz Ensemble and then UNLV's jazz studies program, which have not only provided great music, but produced many of this area's premier musicians.
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Frank Gagliardi (the second "g" is silent) grew up in Denver and became a musical mainstay there.Then he found a few music students at the University of Denver who had no jazz program and no band.He organized them into a jazz ensemble.In its first full year he entered the group into the only major jazz competition at the time, the National Collegiate Jazz Festival at Notre Dame.The band placed fifth.The following year he brought the students back, and they took first place.The next year the band was selected by the U.S. State Department to tour the Far East.Frank came to Las Vegas to work and achieved a personal ambition when, as house drummer for the Sands Hotel for 10 years, he was Frank SinatraÕs drummer year in, year out.Then, based on his outstanding achievement at the University of Denver, he was asked by Ken Hanlon of the UNLV Music Department to start a jazz band, which he did while continuing to work as a drummer.The UNLV Jazz Ensemble got going in 1974.Within a few years it had won every national and international award available, and it continues to thrive today.Ultimately the band snagged an honor no student band should have been able to-- DownBeat magazine reviewed its album Caliente, Muy Caliente with guest Don Menza, and rated it five stars in 1996, a perfect highlight of the year Frank retired as a full professor.
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With the help of Wayne Newton, Frank pioneered a program in which students interned as players in hotel orchestras.
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After much work by Gagliardi, UNLV began offering a bachelor's degree in jazz studies.Before he left, Frank also laid the groundwork for today's graduate degree programs.
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Frank and his wife Charleen, an artist and poet, split their time between Texas, Manzanillo, Mexico, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where Frank has been finishing writing and arranging pieces for the UNLV concert.Before leaving the Bay Area, he said, "I'm just finishing one for Marlena; I'm hoping to make it a really good one.We'll be doing a few with her."Frank says he'll use one or two existing pieces for the Jazz Ensemble, and he's writing three new ones including, "one pretty bossa nova that just turned out beautifully." One piece will be "Simpatica," an arrangement of "kind of like a Basie thing by my old mentor Max DiJulio," he says.
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Frank is delighted with the progress the band and program are making at UNLV, and, what "kills" him is that his musical progeny are all over the Las Vegas music scene.Three of the four tenors at the last Tenor Madness concert came out of his program.Frank's compositions are published regularly.He's also been judging competitions, and often hears student bands playing his charts.He comments that his compositions have changed.

Frank recently retired from his active life as a musician and jazz educator.He is now residing in Northern California after having moved from Las Vegas where he played for thirty-two years.He was the drummer and percussionist at the Sands Hotel during the 60's and 70's when the Sands was one of the most famous hotels in the world.
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Their last CD has just been released as a salute to Mr. Gagliardi's work there.It is appropriately called, "That's a Wrap".Since he was retiring he also wrote an original chart with the same title as the CD. He still writes original charts for Walrus Publishing Co. in Los Angeles and continues to do some adjudicating and clinics in the Bay area.Frank has also received the Governor's Award for "Excellence in the Arts".

Frank was also one of the Founders of the Las Vegas Jazz Society.In 1976, he was asked by famous bassist, Monk Montgomery, (the "driving force" and Founder of what is today, one of the finest Jazz Societies in the Country) to be one of the Society's orginal members of the Board of Directors.

> The Dixie Chix, all-girl dixie band, put together by Frank Gagliardi of UNLV 4months living in Japan. Ah So!

The UNLV Jazz Ensemble with director Frank Gagliardi opened the concert and TV star Greg Morris was MC.

The issue floated a raft of jazz stories and photos: a story on the UNLV Jazz Ensemble and Frank Gagliardi; two biographies of jazz musicians living in Las Vegas: pianist Tom Ferguson, a recent transplant from Tempe, Arizona; and vintage clarinetist/reed man Garvin Bushell.
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Frank Gagliardi.
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The Allied Arts Council Jazz Month committee in 1989 included chairman Walt Blanton and members Carol Blanton, Steve Buffington, Carl Fontana, Frank Gagliardi, Gene Nakanishi; Charlie Owens, Rick Romito, Brian Sanders, Tony Scodwell, Mary Scodwell, Dan Skea, Judy Tarte, Alan Ware and Joe Williams.
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A 1990 AAC Jazz Month poster listed jazz committee members as Walt Blanton, chairman; Carol Blanton, Steve Buffington, Carl Fontana, Frank Gagliardi, Tom Gause, George Lohman, Dick McGee, Charlie Owens, Rick Romito, Dan Skea, Alan Ware and Joe Williams. [Billy Root pictured on cover of Arts]

Frank Gagliardi and faculty of UNLV

Instructor: Frank Gagliardi

"Swingin' The Sinatra Way" was hosted and produced by Dr Herb Wong (internationally known critic, writer, educator, and jazz media producer) on Dec.1st, in the San Francisco Bay Area with the Metro Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Mr. Frank Gagliardi (former jazz director of UNLV and the "house band" at Las Vegas'

When director, Frank Gagliardi, accepted a position at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1964, Tass took over the newly prominent band and took it to new heights through a U.S. State Department Tour in 1965.