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Joan Hutton

Joan Hutton is a woodwind performer, composer and music educator residing in Minneapolis and hailing from Toronto, Canada. Her varied musical interests have led her over the years to classical, jazz, funk, free improvisation, pit orchestras and more. Joan has released two albums of original music on Shifting Paradigm Records with co-leader Sue Orfield: Take That Back (2022) and Splash (2024). She is also a long time member of the Ancia Saxophone Quartet, with recordings on the Naxos and Albany labels.

Joan Hutton / Sue Orfield: Splash

by Jerome Wilson
August 14, 2024

Alto saxophonist Joan Hutton and tenor saxophonist Sue Orfield co-lead a quintet out of the US Midwest called Take That Back. The band's distinctive sound rises out of the rich dialogue between their two leaders. They flow, stomp and roll through a program of mostly original music with high spirits and style. “Splash" and “Playhouse Bats" work through lively New Orleans funk grooves and “#sixfeet" sounds like a Second Line variation on John Coltrane's “Giant Steps." “Atari Afternoon" ...

Album Review

Joan Hutton & Sue Orfield: Take That Back

Read "Take That Back" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 27, 2022

Joan Hutton and Sue Orfield's Take that Back opens with the smooth dark chocolate crooning of Hutton's bass clarinet. The tune is “Dirty Secret," a Hutton-penned, mid-tempo gem. And initially what comes to mind is (Bennie Maupin and Eric Dolphy aside) how rarely we hear the bass clarinet on a jazz album. Then Orfield's tenor sax enters and interweaves lines with Hutton's, and the pairing of sounds presented with the two reeds and the piano, bass and drums rhythm team ...

"When Joan Hutton and Sue Orfield came together to be the frontline for their new group, Take That Back, the chemistry was tangible immediately. With Hutton on alto sax and bass clarinet and Orfield on her trusty tenor, the group recorded one of the most critically acclaimed jazz albums to come out of the Twin Cities this year.” – Sean McPherson, Music Director Jazz88FM