BIO
Guillermo Nojechowicz
Argentinean drummer, composer, and educator Guillermo Nojechowicz grew up in Buenos Aires, surrounded by the tango of Astor Piazzolla, the rock songs of Luis Alberto Spinetta, and the jazz of Oscar Peterson. After moving to the US, he completed a degree in Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music, where he studied with Herb Pomeroy, Billy Pierce, and Andy McGhee.
Guillermo’s 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 – released by Zoho Music – was inspired by the journey of Guillermo’s grandmother who left Warsaw for Argentina in 1933 with her small son. That trip spared them from the Holocaust, when so many others in their community later perished.
Internationally renowned jazz vocalist Luciana Souza has called the album “a beautiful and important record.” EL ECO’s earlier CD, Two Worlds, was described as “true world music at its best” by Kansai Time Out (Japan).
Guillermo’s band members include Helio Alves (piano), Fernando Huergo (bass), Kim Nazarian (vocals), and Marco Pignataro (saxophone), with Grammy© Award winning trumpeter Brian Lynch joining them on the new CD. Over the years, Guillermo 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, the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival, and the Curação North Sea Jazz Festival, where the line-up featured Jon Faddis and Richard Bona.
From 1987 to 1993, Guillermo was an Artist-in-Residence at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, where he worked with film composer Elliot Goldenthal (Frida) and director Andrei Serban.
An international clinician and educator, Guillermo teaches privately, at the Berklee Five Week Summer Program, and as a faculty member with the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS). The World Jazz Ensemble, his student jazz ensemble at CRLS, has performed at Ryle’s Jazz Club, at the Panama Jazz Festival, with Joshua Redman through a program with Harvard University, and with former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky at Google Headquarters in Cambridge.
Guillermo studied piano and composition with 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.
Guillermo Nojechowicz (thumbnail bio)
Originally from Buenos Aires, EL ECO bandleader Guillermo Nojechowicz is the percussive drive behind EL ECO’s elegant fusion of Brazilian Argentinean jazz. Combining samba and candombe with the tighter lines of straight-ahead jazz, he is a master of all the idioms, including Cuban, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, Funk – and of course, tango. A drummer who plays with the ear of a composer, Nojechowicz wrote most of the material on the band’s long-awaited new CD, Puerto de Buenos Aires 1933 (Zoho Music), which features Helio Alves, Fernando Huergo, Kim Nazarian, Marco Pignataro, and Brian Lynch. Nojechowicz has also performed and recorded with Claudio Roditi, Donny McCaslin, Jon Faddis, Danilo Perez, Airto Moreira, Romero Lubambo, Carly Simon, Walter Vanderlei and Pedro Aznar.
Renowned jazz vocalist Luciana Souza has called EL ECO’s new CD “a beautiful and important record.”
An international clinician and educator, Nojechowicz has taught at the Berklee Five Week Summer Program since 2010 and is a faculty member with the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. From 1987 to 1993, he was an Artist-in-Residence at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, where he worked with film composer Elliot Goldenthal (Frida) and director Andrei Serban.