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Byron Asher
Byron Asher is a saxophonist and clarinetist and composer based in New Orleans and working at the intersection of broadly experimental composition and jazz and improvised music.
His practice is dedicated to exploring new sounds across genre, and he is committed to building community through assembling and participating in ensembles that bring together musicians from a diversity of training and aesthetic backgrounds.
Raised in Maryland, he has performed across Europe and the US at major art centers and festivals as well as at dive bars and DIY spaces. Festivals include the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and French Quarter Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, Jazz a Vienne, France, and the Karlovy Vary Jazz Festival, Czech Republic. He has also played shows and festivals in Germany, Poland, and Slovakia and has had his compositions featured at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
He is a 2022 OneBeat Fellow, a program of the US State Department. As a composer, Byron’s work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony, South Arts, A Studio In The Woods (New Orleans), the Jazz And Heritage Foundation (New Orleans), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC), the Marigny Opera Ballet (New Orleans), and the Puffin Foundation (Teaneck, NJ).
Based in Louisiana since 2011, Byron leads Skrontch Music, an award-winning experimental large ensemble, and Basher, a “free jazz party band,” and is an equal collaborator in Flaxan, a brass and woodwind chamber quartet, and Nutria, among many other projects. Also an educator, Byron is adjunct faculty in the music department at the University of New Orleans.
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David Bode: Good Hang
by Jack Bowers
Good Hang. That is not only a good name for an album but one that depicts the luminous spirit animating a splendid debut recording by New Orleans-bred composer, arranger and saxophonist David Bode's stellar nineteen-member Crescent City-based big band. From end to end, top to bottom, stem to stern or inside out, this studio session is a Good Hang by any measure one wishes to use. That impression is nowhere more apparent than on the opening number, ...
Continue ReadingByron Asher, New Orleans Klezmer All Stars, Taylor Eigsti, Mike Holober & More
by Ludovico Granvassu
Taylor Eigsti opens the set with his exciting new album, Plot Armor, and then a focus on large and medium ensembles from New York and New Orleans.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Taylor Eigsti “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" Plot Armor (Ground Up!) 0:16 Host talks 5:57 Mike Holober & The Gotham Orchestra “Erosion" This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters (Palmetto) 7:55 Christopher Zuar Orchestra “Communion" Exuberance (Tonal Conversations) ...
Continue ReadingByron Asher's Skrontch Music: Lord, when you send the rain
by Gareth Thompson
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive one in American history. Seven states were affected and the political fallout saw Herbert Hoover reach the White House by 1929. The saxophonist Byron Asher believes another political action was the development of New Orleans jazz, early in the twentieth century, in direct resistance to the racism of Jim Crow Louisiana. On his rootsy reflective debut, Byron Asher's Skrontch Music (Sinking City Records, 2019), he sought to represent these twin ...
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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson
Lover, You Should Have Come Over
From: Good HangBy Byron Asher
