Thursday, May 28
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Registration Required Below
Step into a world of timeless sophistication as the Jazz Society of Fairfield County presents an Allen & Helen Hermes Art Series concert featuring Dan Pugach, a celebrated and award-winning drummer and composer who won the 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.
Greg Wall — tenor sax
Nitzan Gavrieli — piano
Sam Weber — bass
Dan Pugach — drums
Dan Pugach is a GRAMMY® Award-winning drummer and composer, a 5X GRAMMY® nominee, 2X ASCAP Foundation Jazz Composer Award winner, a recipient of the BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize/Manny Albam Commission for Big Band and a participant at the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Residency Program at the Kennedy Center. He is a 2025 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grantee.
His latest album, Bianca Reimagined: Music for Paws and Persistence (2024), featuring Nicole Zuraitis, won the 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. Additionally, he was the featured drummer on the 2024 GRAMMY® Award-winning album How Love Begins, co-produced by Nicole Zuraitis and Christian McBride. His debut album, Dan Pugach Nonet – Plus One (2018), reached the top 20 in Jazz radio and earned a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocal for Jolene” alongside Zuraitis.
The Dan Pugach nonet and big band perform regularly and have headlined at Dizzy’s, Deer Head Inn, Birdland, Blue Note, Smalls, the 55bar, and the Red Sea Jazz Festival.
Born in Tel Aviv, he served as the drummer for The Air Force Band while attending the Rimon School of Jazz. After studying percussion in Rio de Janeiro, he moved to the U.S. in 2006 to pursue a career in Jazz performance. Pugach holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music (2008), where he studied with Terri Lynn Carrington and Joe Lovano, and a Master of Arts from the City College of New York (2011), where he studied with Mike Holober, Scott Reeves and John Patitucci.
