LARRY SLEZAK
Jazz Instructor

B16D Hicks Central Kitchen 713-348-5925 tenorone@rice.edu

Born in New York City, Mr. Slezak began playing the tenor saxophone at age ten, and was working professionally by the time he was fourteen years old. While in New York he worked with various Jazz and Rhythm and Blues bands. He has performed with many esteemed Jazz artists including Arnett Cobb, Elvin Jones, Don Menza, Hank Crawford, King Curtis, Roy Eldridge, Carmel Jones, Jimmy Smith, Bill Watrous, Jimmy Ford, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Bob Florence, Conrad Herwig, Clifford Scott, Frank Mantooth, Ed Shaughnessy, Lanny Morgan, Marvin Stamm, and many others.

Since moving to Houston in 1973, Mr. Slezak has mastered all the saxophones, clarinet and bass clarinet, flute, piccolo, oboe, and English horn. He has performed in the orchestras for Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny Mathis, Robert Goulet, Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme, Ann Margaret, Bob Hope, Joel Gray, Liza Minelli, Burt Bacharach, and Tony Bennett, as well as Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls, Dianne Carroll, Vicky Carr, Mel Torme, Joe Williams, Dionne Warwick, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Spinners, Esther Phillips, and Billy Eckstine.

Currently Mr. Slezak is the leader of "Sax No End," an exciting concert Jazz ensemble which he introduced to the Gulf Coast area in 1983. He also performs with The Houston Symphony Orchestra, The Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, The Theatre Under The Stars Orchestra, and is in great demand as a guest artist and clinician at schools and universities throughout the Southwest.

Mr. Slezak is the instructor of saxophone and Applied Jazz Studies at Rice University, where he also directs the Rice Jazz Ensembles.