Roman G.

 

“Comics were my first love…until I found the horn.”

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Roman Gonzales also known as Roman G. is a trumpeter, composer, arranger, producer, and teacher. Born in Waukegan, Illinois and raised in Los Lunas, New Mexico. He began playing the trumpet at the age of 11 and took to it instantly. After some diligent practice, he began participating in district solo/ensemble competitions the following year. This would culminate at the end of high school where he would amass over 70 individual awards including a spot in the nationally acclaimed Honor Band of America. In an effort to take his education further, he would audition and be accepted into Berklee College of Music. While there he had the opportunity to study from masters such as Tanya Darby, Marshal Gilkes, Phil Grenadier, Leon Dorsey,  Bill Banfield, Livingston Taylor, Marcus Rojas, and countless others. Roman would later form his large group, Roman G & The Odyssey (RGO). Beginning with a string of successful shows at the college and releasing their debut EP “Sketches” in 2019. Roman remains an active performer, composer, and educator in Kansas City and is currently working on his next project entitled "The Return".

 

The Odyssey

 

“Revolution+Evolution=The Odyssey”

 

The Odyssey was formed in order to promote a dialogue for musical and social change. Every kind of artist has a crucial and functional role in society. I find this especially true in those artists that are boundary pushers. The ones looking to explore deeply and honestly into the human experience through their chosen medium. In a musical sense, that is the purpose of this group. Not merely to play and give reverence to the music that has come before us, but to extend the musical pallet through focused originality. To this end, I believe music has the ability to be the strongest positive force in the world today, specifically what we have come to refer to as “jazz” music. While not a generically or ethically accurate term, it is music traditionally used as a template for the creation of something new. It is the people’s music, it is rebel music, it is life. Because this music pulls heavily from the West African Griot tradition and because the institutionalized form only took some of these important values, I believe music in general has not been able to realize its full potential in this modern age. 

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Enter The Odyssey and 3rd Degree, a new genre of music we are working to pioneer based in this music. 3rd Degree is not only my answer to the question of “what is jazz?”, but what I feel to be the next and natural evolution of this music. While there are many genres of music that operate within a “box”, “jazz” has ceremoniously never been one of those. 3rd Degree is an effort to breathe new life into the music by combining old world ideologies and traditions, with modern sounds and methodologies. Musicologists and other scholars say music is a language and I believe this to be true. However it is not a stagnant one, it must evolve or perish like any other language. The progenitors of this music knew this. After all, with so many new and old sounds on the “scene” it is imperative that we learn to use them to our advantage and integrate them whenever possible in order to build something truly unique. The Odyssey is a collective of like minded individuals who are working to make this dream a reality. With each iteration of the band hailing from broad and eclectic backgrounds, we learn to work together to craft a sound that is familiar, yet decisively unique. We hope to open your ears to the vast possibilities that exist within music and “jazz”. From the most advanced listener to the uninformed, we seek to bridge the communication gap between the audience and the musician. I hope you will take this journey of discovery with us, this odyssey, to expose just how connected we all really are. 

 

-Roman G 

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