Trumpeter, composer, arranger, conductor and music producer. Winner of the National Band Award. In the 1980s and 1990s, he worked with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and was involved in the production of television, radio and film shows, such as Celebrity Review, The Palace and The Tommy Banks Show. His concert appearances alongside Tom Jones and Paul Anka, broadcast by a radio station from Vancouver, Canada, enjoyed tremendous popularity. He collaborated with the CITV Television Studios in Edmonton on the productions featuring the biggest names in the world of music, such as Ray Charles, Tom Jones, Dionne Warwick, Neil Sedaka, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis and Procol Harum. Guthman was also involved in the organisation of important international events in Canada, e.g. the Pacific National Exhibition, the Edmonton Klondike Days, the Canadian National Exhibition and the Calgary Stamped and Exhibition.
Gary Guthman has written hundreds of compositions and arrangements for the most prestigious orchestral establishments in the United States and Canada, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Portland Symphony Orchestra, the Austin Symphony Orchestra and the New York Pops Orchestra (Carnegie Hall). He has appeared as a member of a few dozen renowned big bands under such conductors as Stan Kenton, Louis Bellson, the Dorsey Brothers, Clark Terry and Doc Severinson. He has also performed with the Bee Gees. The list of artists with whom he has cooperated is quite impressive; it includes such household names as Tom Jones, Paul Anka, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Mathis, Burt Bacharach, Tony Bennett and Michel Legrand. He has also been the music manager of Michael Bublé’s band and music director and principal soloist of the musical revue Forever Swing. The show has received a host of awards and has been performed throughout the United States and Canada.
Guthman has also worked as a teacher in Canada, e.g. at the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta, Red Deer College, Alberta College and Grant MacEwan Community College. In addition to trumpet and wind instruments, he also taught and lectured in ensemble playing, jazz improvisation, orchestration and arrangement.
After relocating to Poland, he brought out, in 2011, the CD Solar Eclipse with his own compositions and Mistrz i Małgorzata (The Master and Margarita), released by the label DUX, with music written for harpist Małgorzata Zalewska. In 2016, Agencja Muzyczna Polskiego Radia released Woman in Black, where Gary Guthman appeared in the double role of composer and producer.
Recently, the artist has composed Concerto Romantico for harp and symphony orchestra (premiered at the Zabrze Philharmonic Hall in 2018), Kaddish (first performed at the Singer’s Warsaw Festival in 2018), nine jazz pieces for the poems by Polish poet Miron Białoszewski (soon to be released on CD) and List z Warszawy (Letter from Warsaw), a musical featuring Doman Nowakowski. Apart from composing music, Guthman is also busy as a performer: he has given more than 250 concerts throughout Europe in the last five years.
Gary Guthman was born in Portland, Oregon, where he studied composition and arrangement at Portland State University. He went on to further his music education with such maestros as Henry Mancini and Don Costa (the arranger of works sung by Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett and Paul Anka).
According to American critics, Guthman remains one of the most celebrated trumpet soloists.
