Guillermo Nojechowicz
Guillermo Nojechowicz
drummer, composer, educator, film music
Argentinean drummer, composer, and educator Guillermo Nojechowicz grew up in Buenos AIres. Years later as a Fulbright scholarship recipient, Nojechowicz came to the US to attend Berklee College of Music, where his mentors included Herb Pomeroy, Billy Pierce, and Andy McGhee, graduating with a degree in Film Scoring. He has a Master’s degree in Education from American International College.
His Brazilian-Argentinean jazz ensemble EL ECO has been called “the seedbed of Latin jazz in Boston.” The band’s new CD, Puerto de Buenos Aires 1933, was inspired by the journey of Nojechowicz’s grandmother who left Warsaw for Argentina in 1933 with Nojechowicz’s father, then just a small boy. They fled to a new life, but those they left behind perished in the Holocaust. The Latin jazz suite that Guillermo composed for the CD chronicles their long uncertain journey.
Puerto de Buenos Aires 1933 - released by New York-based Zoho Music - has been called “a beautiful and important record” by internationally renowned jazz vocalist Luciana Souza. Praise for EL ECO’s earlier CD, Two Worlds, came from Jazz Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, with Kansai Time Out (Japan) hailing that record as “true world music at its best.”
Nojechowicz’s band members include Helio Alves (piano), Fernando Huergo (bass), Kim Nazarian (vocals), Marco Pignataro (saxophone), and Grammy winning trumpeter Brian Lynch. Over the years, Nojechowicz has also played with Claudio Roditi, Romero Lubambo, Donny McCaslin, Osmany Paredes, and Airto Moreira, the master Brazilian drummer who played with jazz legend Miles Davis.
In addition to being featured on NPR's Jazz Set, EL ECO has performed at the Regattabar and at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston, the Blue Note in New York City, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Festival performances have included Telluride Jazz Celebration, where the line-up featured Herbie Hancock and Terence Blanchard; Freihofer’s Jazz Festival in Saratoga Springs, produced by the legendary George Wein; the Curação North Sea Jazz Festival, where the line-up featured Jon Faddis and Richard Bona; the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival, and the Dominican Republic Jazz Festival. Most recently, Guillermo was interviewed by Marco Werman for Public Radio International’s The World.
An international clinician and educator, Nojechowicz has taught at the Berklee Five Week Summer and New England Conservatory. He teaches in his private studio and he is a faculty member with the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. In addition to creating the school’s percussion program and first drumline, Nojechowicz – or Mr. N, as many of his students call him – also created the school’s World Jazz Ensemble (WJE).
He has led his WJE students in workshops with guest artists Joshua Redman and Wynton Marsalis through a collaboration with Harvard University. The group has performed at Ryles Jazz Club and at the Panama Jazz Festival. The Festival’s Artistic Director is pianist and humanitarian Danilo Perez. Nojechowicz also led his WJE students in a performance with former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky at Google Headquarters in Cambridge.
He studied piano and composition with Herb Pomeroy and Charlie Banacos and drums with Alan Dawson, Duduka DaFonseca, Portinho, and Gary Chaffee in the US, and with Beatriz Tabares and Chiche Heger in Argentina.