The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2021 Winter Music Grant to Dan Pugach who will complete his second album, Dreams. The project will be completed with his 18-piece jazz orchestra and will include his BMI Jazz Award-winning piece, the premiere of a work made possible by the Manny Albam Commission, as well as arrangements and original pieces for large ensemble and voice written during the 2020 COVID19 pandemic quarantine. The title, Dreams comes from a Van Halen tune that Pugach was commissioned to arrange for big band in honor of a pilot friend who became the U.S Navy’s newest F/A-18 Hornet fighter pilot and got his Wings of gold during the pandemic.

Dan Pugach is a GRAMMY® nominated drummer and composer living in Brooklyn, NY. He was born in Israel and moved to the United States in 2006. He served as the drummer for The Air Force Band in the IDF while attending the Rimon School of Jazz at the same time. He received a Bachelor of Music Degree from Berklee College of Music, where he studied with Terri Lynn Carrington, Hal Crook, and Joe Lovano, and an M.A in music from the City College of New York, where he studied with Mike Holober and John Patitucci.

He is the leader of The Dan Pugach Nonet, a nine-piece ensemble playing his original music and his arrangements. This ensemble tours regularly and has played at Bird’s Eye Basel, The Zone in Tel Aviv, Blue Note Jazz, The 55bar, Smalls Jazz Club, The Jazz Loft, The Jazz Estate, Stowe Jazz Festival among respected Performing Arts Theaters across the nation.

In 2011 Dan received the ASCAP Foundation Young Jazz Composer Award for his Nonet piece “Discourse This!”. In the same year he was selected to participate at the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Residency Program at the Kennedy Center, where he worked with Curtis Fuller, Nathan Davis and George Cables. In 2013 he received another ASCAP Jazz Composer Award for his Nonet piece “Brooklyn Blues”.

His debut 2018 nonet release “Plus One” on UNIT Records has made it to top 20 jazz radio charts and includes Dan’s arrangement of Jolene/Dolly Parton which has been GRAMMY ® nominated for Best Arrangement, Instruments with Vocals, alongside vocalist Nicole Zuraitis.

Pugach is the latest recipient of the BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize/Manny Albam Commission as part of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop.

Please visit Dan’s Instagram, Facebook, and his website for more information.