Kelly Park BIG Band with Mitch Polzak

The Kelly Park Big Band is a 16 piece BIG Band that was founded in 2014. The band is dedicated to the writing and performance of fresh original music and arrangements, it is designed to be a concert band, not a dance band. Although much of the music is composed and arranged by Kelly, he has created a platform that gives band members and local composers an opportunity to write for a big band with no constraints; an opportunity to be as free and creative as possible.

Kelly Park is a former faculty member and alumnus of the Berklee College of Music, Boston MA. He has been a fixture of the San Francisco Bay Area music scene for many years, most notably as Musical Director of the Rrazz Room, the premier SF nightclub from 2007-2013. There he performed with such stars as Loretta Devine, Keely Smith, Pia Zadora, the Shirrelles, Deborah Gibson, Trini Lopez, Deana Martin, and many others. He has performed throughout the United States and Europe, and was the owner of the jazz club Kelly's of Alameda.

Mitch Polzak is the big guy from out West. He has larger than life energy (he’s also 6’5’) and is a stunning performer, guitarist, singer, banjoist, songwriter, composer, entertainer, musical historian and teacher.

Polzak performs rockabilly and 60’s country music with the religious fervor of Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash and delivers a Honky Tonk ballad with the sincerity of Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings. Mitch will bring a room to a fevered pitch of joyous energy on the dance floor and then tell you a story in a song like two old friends sitting at a kitchen table at midnight.

His virtuosic guitar skills and influences range from the blazing flying fingers of Joe Maphis , Marty Stuart, Roy Clark, and Don Rich to the timeless dreamlike state of “Sleepwalk” by Santo and Johnny along with the vast valleys of deep rumbling twang associated with Duane Eddy.

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