Rocky Gordon

I’ve been a member of the musicians union since the early 1970s. I have been a free lance musician for fifty years. During that time I studied composition privately from Wes Hansel, a local trumpet player/ arranger who later moved to Boston to join the Berkeley School of Music faculty.

When live performances slowed down in the late 1980s, I began writing jingles for local businesses that were advertising on radio and tekevision, eventually joining a local radio station to write commercials and sell advertising on radio. By 2006 I joined the launching of the CW Network in Las Vegas and transferred my skills to television.

During my tenure in media I continued performing as a drummer locally, later adding saxophone as an additional professional instrument.

By 2011 I was inducted into the Nevada Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Some of my slogans and jingles were:

Law Offices Of Garrett T. Ogata - “You gotta get Ogata”

Dad’s Bail Bonds - “Been Bad, Call Dad”

I also contributed a recording called The Great Escape to a CW cooking show, and worked with ABC executive Gary Bernstein for a reality show on the Discovery Channel.

In 2019 I made a decision to attend UNLV full time where I received my undergrad degree in spring, 2022 in jazz performance, Magna Cum Laude. From that point I pursued my graduate degree in December 2023 in jazz & commercial music composition. Until recently, I was in a doctoral program at UNLV for jazz performance, waiting to see if the university would add a jazz composition degree. Upon realizing that was not going to happen, I withdrew pursuit of that degree, but still achieved 40 additional credits toward a doctorate.

Currently, I have assembled a 17-piece orchestra that I have been rehearsing since July 2025, and have recently performed at Fat Cat, a local venue downtown in Las Vegas