J. Paul Slavens is an American composer and musician based in Denton, Texas. He plays piano and keyboards along with many other instruments, primarily in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Denton area but has toured nationally with several bands including Ten Hands, Baptist Generals, The Travoltas and others. In addition to regularly composing and playing live music, Paul produces a weekly radio show on KXT in Dallas.
Biography
J.Paul Slavens was born May 20, 1962, to J. Phil and Marion F. Slavens in Dakota City, Nebraska, and graduated from South Sioux City High School. He then attended Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, receiving a BM in Piano Performance. He then moved to Denton, Texas, to pursue a Graduate Degree in Computer Aided Music Theory from NTSU (UNT).
Musical career
Early years
He began taking piano lessons at age 9 and began composing music almost immediately. His siblings also took lessons and he wrote his first songs with his older sister Karen while still in Jr. High School. Always active in band, choir and theater he won awards for acting in High School and was offered a Theater Scholarship to Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. He decided to pursue music instead and received a BM in Piano Performance in 1984. While at college he performed in a "progressive" rock band called Onyx for which he composed most of the music. The band played mostly in the Sioux City area opening for bands such as Steppenwolf, Vixen and John Cougar Mellencamp. The group disbanded when Slavens moved to Denton, Texas, to study Music Theory and NTSU (UNT).
Upon moving to Texas he continued to compose and play in bands. It was in one of these groups named The Gonemen that he met future Ten Hands guitarist Steve Brand. When that group dissolved Brand and Slavens teamed up with Gary Muller, Matt Chamberlain and Mike Dillon to form Ten Hands.
Ten Hands
In 1987, Paul was one of the founding members of Ten Hands, a Denton, Texas-based rock band. Although he completed his course work, activities with Ten Hands kept him from completing his thesis. He played with Ten Hands for nearly a decade, playing frequently throughout the Southwest and releasing several albums for which he was keyboardist, lead vocalist and primary songwriter. Ten Hands and Slavens have released 5 albums and won numerous Dallas Observer Music Awards in various categories.
Solo artist
In 1997 Slavens released an album of piano solo compositions called Absolutes. The Absolutes are piano solo works, often born of improvisations captured initially on computer sequencer and edited later. He created a large body of recorded work throughout the years, although these home recordings were mostly unreleased, until 2016 when he began releasing them on Bandcamp under the title Juvenilia. At present there are 10 albums in this archival series with several more to be released. The music composed and recorded during these years c.1984-94 run the gamut from classical fugues to electronic soundscapes and humorous pieces as well as a large number of songs in various styles.
Slavens was also inspired by the jazz music he was exposed to in Denton, NTSU (UNT) being the home of the first University level Jazz Music program in America. He composed a collection of "heads" called the Texclectic Songbook, and many of the pieces in the collection Alphabet Girls also fall in the jazz category.
In the mid 90s Slavens began creating improvisational songs based on audience suggestions, and has created an estimated 2000 songs over the last 2 decades, many recordings exist, although few have been released. Often these songs are humorous in nature and can be quite ribald.
In 2014 Slavens teamed up with Danielle Georgiou Dance Group (DGDG) to create the work NICE. It had a sold out run at the Wylie Theater in Dallas Texas. The piece was part of the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Elevator Project, a series highlighting smaller theater and dance companies. It was also performed at the Out of the Loop Festival at the Watertower Theater in Addison TX. An Album of the music is planned for release in 2017.
Slavens has also performed his score for the silent movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame at several venues, notably The Dallas Museum of Art, The Greenzone Theater in Dallas, Club Dada in Dallas, The Grapevine Palace Theater in Grapevine Tx and The Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma, CA. The score for the Lon Chaney classic film utilized leit motif, parody and is largely improvisational, it has been performed by groups from 4 to 12 members.
