Big Truck

Big Truck

Big Truck is a Philadelphia jazz group that develops from a piano-based quartet into a drum, bass and sax trio. After the pianist leaves in early 2004, the group continues without a chordal instrument and focuses on building harmony and texture through other means. Its music is described as moving between urban sensibilities, improvisation and what it calls bright, twisted aural trajectories.

Philadelphia performances and collaborations

The group plays in a range of Philadelphia settings, including coffee shops, jazz festivals, Tonic and The Khyber, as well as arts productions and benefit events. It also collaborates with Moxie Dance Collective, vocalist Monica Macintyre and members of Headlong Dance Theater in improvisational projects.

Mark Monteith

Mark Monteith moves from piano and violin to electric guitar and later to upright acoustic bass. He begins composing in the mid-1980s and works across experimental, indie and jazz projects. His credits include live soundscapes for Pig Iron Theater Company’s Anodyne, which wins a Barrymore Award for best sound design, and work with Moxie Dance Collective at The Arts Bank, Painted Bride and the Kimmel Center. He also plays with Amy Pickard and the Cradlers, studies Gnawan rhythms, and performs with members of Kronos Quartet at the Colly Soleri Music Center at Arcosanti. He builds the double bass used on Blowout from scratch while living above a woodshop.

Chris Wierzbicki

Chris Wierzbicki starts piano at the age of six and later adds trumpet, guitar and drums. He grows up listening to jazz while many people around him listen to pop and rock. His playing history includes concert bands, marching bands, jazz bands, the rock group Sandy Duncan’s Glass Eye, and the folk-rock duo Wiggly Path. He writes and records more than 10 hours of original music in a home studio between 1998 and 2004, performs in several prog rock bands, and later finds a place in the Philadelphia jazz scene. Under the name Underbeard, he releases several singles and a jazz soundtrack for a local gospel choir’s trip to Africa.

Mark Dunn

Mark Dunn takes up saxophone after hearing Sonny Rollins’ The Sound of Sonny. He forms a weekly open-mic band called C What Happens, develops his playing with the Latin American group Clave Latina, and later moves to Sydney. After a year busking on the harbour every Saturday night, he experiments with a saxophone quartet playing jazz, television themes and other material, and then works with a 30-piece big band playing swing arrangements. He also earns one bandmate the title of Australian Record Industry Jazz Talent of the Year.