Malarkey is an eclectic quartet featuring Trombone, Baritone Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone, Bass, Keyboards, Melodicas, Hand Percussion, and more. It’s artists include Saxophonist Bill Burns, Trombonist Rich Begel, Bassist Chris Berg, and Keyboardist Brian Cashwell.
We perform original compositions, jazz standards, and the occasional pop/rock arrangement. We are often the main attraction at concert halls, libraries, senior centers, art museums, or other facilities. We can also provide just the right mood for your event reception and we offer educational programs that teach music and our instruments.
If you would like to hire Malarkey please contact Rich Begel through the information at the top or bottom of the page, or submit a comment on the main page of this site.
Please enjoy these videos followed by biographies of our members.
Bill Burns, Saxophones, Melodica, Hand Percussion
Bill is an active jazz educator and performer across southwest Ohio and has been referred to by the Dayton Daily News as “the biggest, baddest, baritone sax player to play here in a long time.” Bill is the founder and leader of the Bright Moments Jazz Quintet and the Unity Saxophone Quartet. He is a member of the Dayton Jazz Orchestra, The Psychoacoustic Orchestra, The Tom Daughtery Orchestra, and various regional bands. Bill’s performance experience includes work for Norwegian and Holland America Cruise lines, the Dayton Philharmonic, the Northern Kentucky Symphony, and the Blue Wisp Big Band. He has had the honor of backing up such legends as Phil Woods, John Pizzarelli, Arturo Sandoval, Diana Schuur, John Fedchock, Billy Hart, Denis DaBlazio, Bobby Watson, Frankie Vallie, The Temptations, The O Jays, and the Funk brothers, among others. As an educator, Bill has been on faculty with the Miami Valley Jazz Camp since 1996. In 2005, Bill was nominated for the Harry T. Wilkes outstanding educator award while teaching in Hamilton City Schools . He currently teaches General Music and Jazz Ensemble in Centerville City Schools and serves as adjunct professor at Sinclair Community College. Bill is past president of the Jazz Education Connection of Ohio and has presented jazz clinics at both the Ohio Music Education Association Convention and the National Jazz Education Network convention in New Orleans. You can hear Bill on recordings such as Serenade in Blue with the CCM Big Band, Swing,Dance, Remember with the Dayton Jazz Orchestra, and Do What You Gotta Do with the Bill Burns Quartet. His most recent recording, Jazz Advice, is available on CDbaby.com with the Bright Moments Quintet. Bill holds a B.A. in Music Education from the University of Dayton and a Masters in Saxophone Performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. For more information about Bill, visit http://www.billburnsjazz.com.
Rich Begel, Trombone, Melodica, Hand Percussion
Rich has been a trombonist with the Dayton Philharmonic since 2003, and he is in Malarkey, Trombones of Dayton, and The Greater Dayton Brass Ensemble. He has performed as a substitute with ensembles around the country such as the Naples Opera, Southwest Florida Symphony, Charlotte Symphony (FL), the Klezmer Company Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony, Columbus Symphony, Boston Ballet, Alabama Symphony, Kentucky Symphony, Summit Brass, Canadian Brass, Scythian, Enter the Haggis, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, The Beach Boys, The Indigo Girls, The Temptations, Sarah McLachlan, John Pizzarelli, Arturo Sandoval, & others. He is a former member of the Springfield Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Tanglewood Festival, National Repertory Orchestra, Spoleto Festival, And Festival of Two Worlds (Italy).
Rich has been a soloist with the Miami Valley Symphony Orchestra, the Kettering Seventh Day Adventist Church Band, the Sinclair Community College Band, the Northwest Indiana Symphony, a chamber orchestra in Anchorage, Alaska, and he performs solo jazz at retirement facilities and Klezmer music at Jewish facilities.
Rich teaches Music Technology, Music Appreciation, and Low Brass at Sinclair Community College; Low Brass & Brass Choir Director at Earlham College; Low Brass at Indiana University East and Spring Valley Academy; and Brass at the Miami Valley School. He has been a clinician for Sinclair, Valparaiso University, University of Alaska Anchorage, the USAF Band of the Pacific in Anchorage, the Raphael Mendez Brass Institute, & more. Rich has taught at the Park City International Chamber Music Festival (UT), Pine Mountain Music Festival (MI), & other festivals. In addition, Rich has been public-school certified in three states and taught general music, orchestra, and brass class.
He is the author of A Modern Guide for Trombonists & Other Musicians & the editor of Intonation Repair Tool (first edition). His students are now in youth orchestras, colleges & conservatories (on scholarship), professional performers, teachers, & administrators.
Rich received his Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education & Performance from The Crane School of Music at The State University of New York at Potsdam and a Master of Music degree from New England Conservatory. He later did doctoral work at Michigan State University. Rich’s instruments include the trombone, alto trombone, and euphonium.
Chris Berg, Bass
Mr. Berg holds a Master of Arts in Theory and Composition from Montclair State University, NJ and a Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance from Manhattan School of Music in New York. He has also had private studies in piano, voice, and guitar.
He has taught guitar, bass, and composition/arranging, in the classical, pop, jazz, and Latin music idioms at the University level and at middle school and high school workshops and clinics throughout the Midwest. He is currently assistant professor at Central State University, adjunct professor at Otterbein University in Westerville and a faculty member at the Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp and the Miami Valley Jazz Camp.
He has enjoyed an active career in jazz for four decades as a performer in clubs, concerts, festivals, films, radio, and television with Susanna McKorkle, Mel Lewis, Jimmy Knepper, Joe Albany, Chuck Wayne, Bob Wilber, Marty Grosz, John Pizzarelli, and any many others. Since 2005 he has been the bassist with the prestigious Columbus Jazz Orchestra and has performed with them in Denmark, Germany, and all over the US as well as in their regular concert series at the Southern Theatre in Columbus, Ohio.
Mr. Berg appears on dozens of commercial recordings and his CDs of original compositions, A Man is a Tree and Sweet Sorrow, both on Hipgnosis Records, have received much critical acclaim.
He is very active as a composer/arranger and his songs, jazz compositions, orchestral and chamber pieces and big band arrangements have been performed and recorded by many artists, locally and nationally. He has written music for film & television, musical theatre and video games. With Moira Levant, he co-founded the Composers Organization, COCOA.
As the former Director of Research and Music Development with Brain Actuated Technologies, Inc., Yellow Springs, OH, he developed and patented software for brain-actuated music. He is the inventor of the Berg Bass-in-a-Box, a collapsible semi-acoustic bass.
Brian Cashwell, Piano/Keyboard
Dr. Brian Cashwell (D.M.A. University of Cincinnati college-Conservatory of Music, M.M. University of Georgia, B.M. Florida State University is currently serving as an adjunct faculty member at Wright State University. Equally at home in jazz and classical idioms, he maintains an active schedule performing in a variety of musical roles. At Wright State he teaches jazz history, jazz improvisation, class piano, jazz piano and world music courses. He has also collaborated with the WSU Women’s Chorale and Collogiate Chorale, and performed in various student and faculty recitals.
His performing experience includes tours with The Boys Choir of Harlem throughout the U.S. and abroad, and choral collaborations with the Cleveland Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, and other notable ensembles as pianist for the Central State University Choir. He served as the pianist for the premiere of Rosephanye Powell’s To Sit and Dream, and Steven Aldredge’s The Lord is My Shepherd. His own arrangement of Johnny Mandel’s You Are There was premiered by the WSU Women’s Chorale.
As a jazz musician he has performed with the Blue Wisp Big Band, Masterworks Jazz Ensemble, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Byron Striping, John Fedchock, Marcus Printump, Dominick Farinacci, Melvin Sparks, James Carter, Lew Soloff, Bob DeVos, John Von Ohlen, Rusty Burge, and many, many others. He has studied jazz with Fred Hersch, Gary Dial, Phil DeGreg, and Mike LeDonne. His trio is in demand locally and has been featured in many performance venues, including the first annual Fairborn Jazz Festival. He is a faculty member of the Miami Valley Jazz Camp, and a member of the Bright Moments Quintet which will be performing at The 2017 OMEA convention in Cleveland. He has broad a discography as a collaborative musician, bandleader, and composer, and his playing has been broadcast nationwide on NPR.
He also recently made his motion picture debut as a producer onscreen in the 2015 Don Cheadle film Miles Ahead, a fictionalized biopic of Miles Davis.
Before joining Wright State, Brian Cashwell lived in New York City. While in New York, he performed in various musical roles at a diverse selection of venues including The Blue Note, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Symphony Space, The Lion’s Den, The Cutting Room, Kavehaz, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also served as a ballet pianist for The School of American Ballet, Barnard College, Steps on Broadway, Ballet Academy East, and The Alvin Ailey School.
His theatre works includes performances in touring Broadway productions of The Producers, Phantom of the Opera, Hairspray, Pacific Overtures, The Irish Tenors, and many other productions at Cincinnati’s Aronoff Center, Music Hall, and Playhouse in the Park. He has consistently served as a church musician throughout his career, and is currently the organist and men’s ensemble director at Normandy United Methodist Church.
When not at the piano, he enjoys delving into cooking various world cuisines, especially the food of Thailand.