Dallas artist Johnny Robertson captures the mythology of the West Coast for a gallery show now running in, well, Los Angeles. Will he do the same for his home state? Find out in this week’s Art&Seek Q&A.

Art & Seek spoke to Steve Wiest, the director of the One O’Clock Lab And, just as UNT’s leading jazz group is about to head to Thailand to perform as the featured big band at the World Saxophone Congress in Bangkok. We talked about the declining audience for jazz (is it entirely overseas now?), the place of the trombone in jazz (preferably in the back, near the drinks) and the future of jazz (soon to be traded as a commodity).

Now in her fourth year as University of North Texas music professor, Elizabeth McNutt has pieces written for her by contemporary music composers, and she is flown into places like Dublin, Seoul and Switzerland to debut new works. On Monday evening (April 13), Elizabeth performs with The Tornado Project in Denton – a trio for flute, clarinet and computer.

One of the premiere college jazz bands in the country has a new leader at the helm. The University of North Texas has named Steve Wiest director of the school’s One O’Clock Lab Band. The school filled two other vacancies today: Tim Brent has been named director of vocal jazz and John Murphy has been [...]

Former president Bill Clinton is auctioning off his autographed iPod as part of a Music Rising fundraiser. That’s the charity that helps Gulf Coast musicians replace instruments lost or destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. Internet bidding, which began Tuesday at Tonic.com, stood at $1,126 this afternoon. Reportedly containing some of the ex-Prez’ personal faves, the red [...]

Photo credit: Tapias Tejano Pics College students entering the workforce are always in need of something to make their resumes pop. For University of North Texas student Duane Hargis, that item will be the Grammy Award that he won earlier this month. Hargis is a graduate student in the jazz studies program at UNT and [...]

The 2009 Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference, hosted by the University of North Texas, will feature This American Life‘s Ira Glass as well as celebrated travel writer Paul Theroux and Latin American journalist Alma Guillermoprieto. Since its inception five years ago, the conference has brought in major journalists and long-form nonfiction writers, including Gay Talese, [...]

Doug Burr, left, and Jon Collins If you ever have the opportunity to hang out with Doug Burr and Jon Collins at the Belmont Hotel in Oak Cliff, I highly recommend it. Jon, who lives in East Dallas, is a self-taught filmmaker with a penchant for the music video and a God-given gift for editing. [...]

Neil Slater conducts the One O’Clock Lab Band. For local jazz fans, the biggest event of the year just might be going down this weekend in Denton. The University of North Texas will host a reunion concert on Saturday in honor of the retiring directors of the school’s One O’Clock and Two O’Clock Lab bands, [...]

Jennifer Rose spent a recent morning meticulously installing vinyl patterns to a gallery wall, an afternoon feeding her child chocolate bunny crackers and answering interview questions, and, run down by midnight, chilled with an episode of Ghost Hunters. She’s especially busy these days as she is one of the artists in CADD Art Lab’s second [...]