Home » Member Page
Michael Eaton
Saxophone, composer, educator
About Me
Michael Eaton (b. 1981) is a Brooklyn, NY based saxophonist, composer, and educator active in
contemporary jazz and free improvisation. He embraces a progressive and holistic vision of jazz,
cognizant of the music's rich history, while he reaches for a personal outlook with an eye towards
future possibilities.
Michael leads Individuation, a contemporary jazz ensemble that combines modern jazz with
postminimalism, world rhythms, and open improvisation. Their latest album is Dialogical on Destiny
Records. JazzTimes writes 'Serious play' may be a cliché by now, but it exemplifies the spirit that
dances through this set, and AllAboutJazz says There is more than enough promising music on
Dialogical to justify Eaton's status as a force to be reckoned with in today's jazz world. The recording
is made up of all original compositions and improvisations with a stellar cast of musicians, plus master
guitarist Lionel Loueke on guitar and voice.
Michael's 2014 debut album on Destiny, Individuation, combines angular themes and propulsive
modern jazz with intricate minimalistic vamps, freebop, prepared piano, and multi-layered structures.
The band is joined on several cuts by a very special guest, NEA Jazz Master and saxophonist David
Liebman. Scott Yanow (All Music Guide, Downbeat) calls Individuation a rather impressive debut, the
start of what will surely be a very significant solo career, and Vitto Lo Conte writes in Music Zoom
that it signifies a great debut album of a saxophonist and a quartet who seem to have all it takes to
get noticed in the world of contemporary jazz.
Eaton's next album, Individuation III: The Phenomenal, is in development for a release on Dialogical
Records, date TBD. The music pairs quartet with three guest artists: Tim Hagans, Dave Scott, and Judi
Silvano. In particular, this recording is the first studio encounter of Scott and Hagans. In part this
recording was financed by a New York Foundation of the Arts grant through the City Artist Corp.
Eaton also heads Tenor Triage, an outward bound, free jazz-oriented take on the classic format of three
tenors. With fellow saxophonists James Brandon Lewis and Sean Sonderegger, the band’s chemistry
melds harmolodics and hymnic free jazz with groove and caterwauling polyphony. The band's debut
on Ropeadope Records, Tenor Triage, enlists bassist Brad Jones and drummer Calvin Weston, both
alumni of Ornette Coleman. The album is dedicated to the late harmolodic guitar master Bern Nix.
Starting in 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic lockdown, pianist Nicki Adams and Eaton
embarked on a piano/saxophone duo, recording videos of jazz tunes which Adams then produced for
YouTube. Documenting their rapport in April 2021, Paraphrase, the resulting recording was picked up
by long-running international jazz label, Steeplechase Records, on March 15, 2022.
Michael has enjoyed a long association in NYC with flutist/composer/lyricist Cheryl Pyle through
Beyond Group, a free improvised chamber group with rotating personnel and orchestrations.
Musicians who have played with Beyond include guitarist Bern Nix, percussionist Newman Taylor
Baker, pianist Roberta Piket, bassoonist Claire de Brunner, bassist Hilliard Greene, bass flutist Gene
Coleman, baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, alto saxophonist Daniel Carter, soprano saxophonist Sam
Newsome, flutist Jamie Baum, vocalist Judi Silvano, and drummer Reggie Sylvester, and
composer/conductor Carman Moore.
As a native of the Kansas City, Missouri metropolitan area, Eaton co-leads the Second Nature
Ensemble in Kansas City with guitarist/composer Seth Andrew Davis. Second Nature interweaves free
jazz, contemporary classical, and noise improv with postminimalism, math rock, and electronic beats.
Kansas City improvised music critic Plastic Sax called their June 27, 2021 performance revelatory
and that provided a glimpse into a possible future of a viable form of jazz in Kansas City...no locally
based ensemble executes the [electroacoustic] concept with more cultivated acumen. Eaton and Davis
also play as the duo Symbiotique, with saxophone, guitar, and/or laptop electronics. They released
Symbiotique in 2020 for their newly founded Mother Brain Records label and then The Maximal Effect
in 2021.
For over 10 years, Michael has collaborated in a variety of musical settings with New York bassist/multi
instrumentalist Adam Minkoff (Dweezil Zappa, Doyle Bramhall II). One ensemble is Vaalbara, a post-
70s Miles/New York downtown band that blends rock, jazz, funk, groove-based open free
improvisation, and spoken word. Another is their free improvised trio, Anderson/Eaton/Minkoff, with
drummer Nick Anderson, which released Hit Record in 2013. Minkoff and Eaton also revive
1960s/70s soul jazz and acid jazz in Rockwood Organ Lounge, which usually includes guitarist Al
Street, organist Todd Caldwell, and drummers Sean Dixon, Tony Mason, Bill Campbell, or Eric Kalb.
Minkoff celebrated the 100th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's seminal Rite of Spring in May 2013 by
transcribing, arranging, and performing a rock octet edition of the piece, replete with Zappa-esque
overtones. Following an electrifying, standing room only Rockwood Music Hall performance, the
ensemble recorded the Rite in November 2014 as well as a vocal suite by Stravinsky, where Michael
played alto saxophone and flute. The album, Til the End My Dear: Arrangements of Stravinsky, came
out in April 2018 with an August 2018 release party at Nublu Classic.
Eaton and Minkoff have jointly curated jazz concerts under the name Michael Eaton and Adam Minkoff
Present. First, on June 8, 2015, they commemorated John Coltrane's iconic 1965 free jazz album,
Ascension, at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn. The concert received coverage by the New York TImes's
Nate Chinen, as well as the Village Voice's Jim Macnie, with the Voice citing it as one of the top nine
concerts to see that week in New York City. The ensemble's personnel brought together saxophonists
Michael Attias, Daniel Carter, Sean Sondergger, James Brandon Lewis, and Briggan Krauss; trumpeters
Dan Brantigan, Jonathan Finlayson, and Graham Haynes; guitarist Ava Mendoza; pianist Anthony
Coleman; and drummers Nick Anderson and Calvin Weston. Eaton subsequently plans to perform
Ascension once every 10 years.
On December 1, 2017, Eaton and Minkoff returned to late Coltrane again, focusing on the 50th
anniversary of two undersung classics from 1967: Interstellar Space and Stellar Regions. Over the
course of two sold out sets at Williamsburg's National Sawdust, they essayed seldom performed late
Coltrane with a super powered band of David Liebman, Marc Ribot, Jamie Saft, Nick Anderson, and
Anthony Cole.
Michael has appeared with the Laura Andrea Leguía Jazz Orchestra, an Afro-Peruvian big band, as part
of a series of gigs at Zinc Bar. The band played at Symphony Center for Peruvian Independence Day in
July 2015. Michael has played Afro-Colombian folk music and arrangements with Grupo Rebolú (who
appeared at the 2016 Montreaux Jazz Festival), and he appears on videos with the group on
congahead.com, with guests Edmar Castaneda (harp) and Jimmy Bosch (trombone). In April 2016,
Michael recorded with vocalist/pianist Lorens Chuno on his West African/Jazz Fusion album, Naija
Rhythm Affair, NYC, and he appears on Chuno's 2018 release, Rhythm Sustained.
In the soul, rock, and R&B idioms, Michael contributed tenor saxophone to Doyle Bramhall's 2016
album Rich Man on Concord Records. In 2016, Michael played with guitarist Scott Sharrard (Greg
Allman Band) and his Brickyard Band at Rockwood Music Hall, Bar Chord, and The Falcon (Marlboro,
NY). He recorded tenor and alto saxophone plus flute recordings on Five & Dime Records for soul
crooner Paul Loren: 2014's Leisurely and 2016's Paul Loren...Is Available!.
Michael earned a degree in Jazz Studies from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University-
Bloomington in 2004. After moving to Brooklyn in 2008, he became involved in an array of creative
music. He has performed at venues such as: Le Poisson Rouge, National Sawdust, Cornelia Street
Cafe, 55 Bar, The Blue Note, Birdland Theater, Zinc Bar, The Kitano, ShapeShifter Lab, Drom, Small's
Jazz Club, Rockwood Music Hall, Downtown Music Gallery, Spectrum NYC, iBeam, Symphony Center,
Nublu, Bowery Ballroom, Why Not Jazz, ABC No Rio, Somethin' Jazz, The Tea Lounge, Sycamore Hall,
Club Groove, Bowery Poetry Club, Bar Chord, Spike Hill, The Fifth Estate, and The Underground
Lounge.
Michael's teachers include Eugene Rousseau, Tom Walsh, David Baker, David Liebman, Tony Malaby,
Steve Coleman, James Moody, Ned Goold, Ellery Eskelin, Ralph Alessi, Randy Peterson, Doug Webb,
Gary Foster, and Dwight Frizzell. He was a 2018 attendee of the SIM (School for Improvised Music)
seminars in Brooklyn.
He has appeared on gigs or as a side artist with David Baker, David Liebman, Tim Hagans, Ingrid
Jensen, Fred Hersch's Leaves of Grass, Jim Snidero, Eugene Chadbourne, Jimmy Carl Black, Ned
Rothenberg, Jamie Saft, Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman, G Calvin Weston (Prime Time, the Lounge
Lizards), Cheryl Pyle, Bern Nix, Damon Smith, Newman Taylor Baker, Daniel Carter, Michael Attias,
Jonathan Finlayson, Claire Daly, Jamie Baum, Anthony Cole, Doyle Bramhall II, Jon Cowherd, Frank
LoCrasto, Kyle Quass, Cory Smythe, Stephan Crump, Judi Silvano, Phil Markowitz, Roberta Piket, Tony
Marino, Matt Darriau, Jessica Lurie, Akie Bermiss, Sylvia McNair, and The Temptations.