As director of Jazz Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Dana Landry directs UNC’s award-winning Lab Band I. Other programs under his direction include UNC’s Greeley Jazz Festival, Jazz Press, Sunset Guest Artist Series, and UNC’s Summer Camp.
The UNC Jazz Program students have won over 100 “Downbeat Magazine” awards in the last 30 years. In 2011 UNC Lab Band I was recognized as the “Best College Big Band” by “Downbeat Magazine.” In 2010 undergraduate and graduate students won eight awards for best jazz combo, instrumental soloist, original song, jazz arrangement, and vocal jazz soloist.
In 2008, UNC Lab Band I released a CD entitled Here in the Now. This multi-year project involves recordings made between spring of 2005 and fall 2006. Three of the tracks resulted in UNC Jazz Band’s recognition as “Best College Big Band” by Down Beat magazine in 2006 (a distinction it also received in 2005). The recording is a compilation of works by the most highly acclaimed writers on the contemporary jazz scene -- from the forward-looking music of Bob Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely, Maria Schneider, and Vince Mendoza, to the mainstream music of Bob Mintzer, to the more traditional, Basie-influenced pen of John Clayton.
