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Alan Ferber

Three-time GRAMMY-nominated trombonist-composer-arranger Alan Ferber has been called “one of the jazz world’s premier composers and arrangers for larger groups” by All About Jazz NY. Jazz Times magazine describes Ferber’s compositions as “inspired and meticulous” and the L.A. Weekly deems him “one of the premier modern jazz arrangers of our time.” For the last seven years, he has been recognized as one of the leading trombonists of his generation in Down Beat magazine’s International Critics’ Poll and Readers’ Poll. Ferber was the recipient of a 2013 New Jazz Works grant from Chamber Music America, funded by the Doris Duke Foundation. Since 2011, he has been an Adjunct Professor of jazz studies at New York University’s Steinhardt School.

Ferber’s aesthetic prescribes a deep knowledge of the jazz tradition as a means toward meaningful innovation. Appropriately, the Wall Street Journal describes his music as “somehow both old school and cutting edge.” He has released eight albums as a bandleader, most recently, Jigsaw, for 17-piece big band (Sunnyside Records 2017). Down Beat magazine listed it as one of the best CDs of 2017 and stated, “Ferber…demonstrates full mastery. His big band belongs in the idiom’s current top tier.” Jigsaw has also been nominated for a 2018 GRAMMY award for ‘Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.’ Prior to Jigsaw, Ferber released “Roots & Transitions” in 2016, an eight-movement original piece for his working nonet, from which his composition Flow was nominated for a 2017 GRAMMY award for ‘Best Instrumental Composition.’ Ferber’s 2013 release for his big band on the Sunnyside label, March Sublime, features original compositions and arrangements and was nominated for a 2014 GRAMMY award in the ‘Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album’ category. Prior to that, Ferber released “Chamber Songs-Music For Nonet & Strings” (Sunnyside) which received a coveted 4 star review in Down Beat and was named one the magazine’s “Best CDs of the Year.”

Ferber’s music draws from a broad stylistic base informed by the array of artists with whom he has closely worked. In the jazz world, he has performed and/or recorded with Best New Artist GRAMMY-winner Esperanza Spalding’s Radio Music Society, the Dr. Lonnie Smith Octet, the Ted Nash Big Band, Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors, MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenon’s Identities Big Band, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, the Charlie Hunter Quintet, Michael Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, the David Binney/Edward Simon Group, the Lee Konitz Nonet, John Ellis’s Double Wide, the Dafnis Prieto Big Band, the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, and Don Byron’s Mickey Katz Project.

He has worked extensively in other genres as well with artists including Peter Gabriel (Live at the Ed Sullivan Theater), Paul Simon, Sufjan Stevens (Age of Adz & All Delighted People), The National (on Grammy-nominated Trouble Will Find Me), Dr. Dre, Harry Connick Jr, Michael Buble, and Beirut. His discography lists over 150 CDs on which he has played trombone and/or composed and arranged music.

Ferber’s accomplishments as a writer are equally diverse. His recent work as a composer-arranger include ten 18-piece big band arrangements for Broadway star Shoshana Bean‘s new album, Spectrum; Two big band arrangements of Joni Mitchell compositions featuring vocalist Tutu Puoane with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra on their album, We Have A Dream. Two commissions ~ Kopi Luwak and Luteous Pangolin (Ben Monder) ~ written for the Atlantic Brass Quintet (and released on their 2014 album Crossover on Summit Records); Big band arrangements of I Sing For You (Nancy King) and I Get Along Without You Very Well (Hoagy Carmichael), featuring GRAMMY-nominated violinist Sara Caswell and her sister, vocalist Rachel Caswell with the JazzMn Orchestra; Hyperballad (Bjork), arranged for the avant-classical music outfit Bang On A Can’s Asphalt Orchestra; Farewell (Nelson Foltz) arranged for a recording with 8 trombones joined by acclaimed vocalist Rebecca Martin; nine arrangements for Korean Sony recording artist Youngjoo Song’s 2015 release, Reflection, nominated for Jazz Album of the Year at the 2015 Korean Music Awards; .

In addition to New York University, Ferber has also been on faculty at the John J Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and the New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music. He has worked regularly on the faculties of several summer jazz programs including the Taipei International Summer Jazz Academy, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the Lafayette Summer Music Jazz Workshop, Cal State University’s Summer Arts Perspectives In Jazz program, and the Maine Jazz Camp. He has appeared as a clinician and soloist with numerous universities including Stanford University, the University of Oregon, Cal State Northridge, Kansas University, the University of Miami, the Lawrence Conservatory, Middle Tennessee State University, and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

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Jody Redhage Ferber / Alan Ferber / Mark Ferber: Confluence

Read "Confluence" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
July 18, 2025

Cellist Jody Redhage Ferber has been at the forefront of creative music for two decades, effectively straddling the line between jazz and classical settings. Her husband, celebrated trombonist Alan Ferber, is one of this genre's premiere large group composers, having garnered multiple Grammy nominations and topped polls with both his nonet and big band. His twin brother, ace drummer Mark Ferber, has long been a first call to both jazz stars and up-and-comers. Together, these three have experienced personal and ...

Album Review

Mike Holober & The Gotham Jazz Orchestra: This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters

Read "This Rock We're On: Imaginary Letters" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 9, 2025

This Rock We're On, acclaimed composer and pianist Mike Holober's 2024 recording as leader of the Gotham Jazz Orchestra, is challenging to summarize in mere words, as it consists of a multi-part suite (on two CDs) which blends jazz, classical and art songs in a thematic environment that uses a series of “imaginary letters" from a half dozen writers, artists and activists. Holober's orchestral response to them is the premise for “a meditation on the beauty of nature and the ...

Album Review

The Len Pierro Jazz Orchestra: As I Was Saying

Read "As I Was Saying" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 17, 2025

Remember the good old days before high-tech hardware and software seized control and the country's leading big bands were recorded in a studio or in concert employing a wide dynamic range with no overdubs or splices to enhance the performance? Composer and arranger Len Pierro does, which is why he planned As I Was Saying, the second album with his Philadelphia-based Jazz Orchestra, to mirror those classic recordings by the likes of Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
December 30, 2024

È decisamente un periodo d'oro per l'orchestrazione jazz. Ai molti bandleader e arrangiatori emersi nel nuovo millennio, si aggiunge decisamente Christopher Zuar, che firma il secondo album confermando le doti espresse in Musings (Sunnyside), il debutto di otto anni fa. Con un diploma al New England Conservatory e un master alla Manhattan School of Music, Zuar aggiunge una spiccata fantasia nell'arricchire il modern mainstream orchestrale di nuove suggestioni. Questo progetto è stato concepito tra il 2017 e ...

Album Review

Christopher Zuar Orchestra: Exuberance

Read "Exuberance" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 23, 2024

Composer/arranger Christopher Zuar's second album, Exuberance, recounts in musical terms a twisting yet picturesque journey that began seven years earlier, in 2017, when Zuar first met his now-wife, the animator Anne Beal, at MacDowell, the famed artists' residency in New Hampshire. While the relationship “blooms" in winter, there are “moments between" and other inescapable detours until “certainty" erases any lingering doubts, “exuberance" carries the day and Zuar and Beal are united as one. Yes, the music is ...

Album Review

Tracy Yang: OR

by Angelo Leonardi
December 9, 2024

Il percorso biografico e artistico di Tracy Yang ha molte affinità con quello di Jihye Lee, l'ormai nota arrangiatrice e bandleader coreana che s'è imposta con i significativi album Infinite Connections e Daring Mind. Tracy Yang viene da Taiwan, dove lavorava come radiologa. Come Jihyie Lee ha appreso in un decennio le tecniche dell'orchestrazione partendo da zero, ha studiato al Berklee e in altri college statunitensi e fatto esperienza sul campo a New York. Darcy James ...

Album Review

Jon Gordon: 7th Ave South

Read "7th Ave South" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 29, 2024

Some of life's moments, even when buried in the past, remain almost as fresh and memorable as today's. Such is alto saxophonist Jon Gordon's memory of his first visit to New York City's then-jazz center, Greenwich Village's 7th Avenue South, which was “the first place [he] ever heard live jazz in New York." That was in 1983--nearly four decades ago--but that memory and those that followed were enough to inspire Gordon's latest album, appropriately titled 7th Ave South.

TV / Film

The Harborfields High School Jazz Band celebrates community in premiering Alan Ferber's arrangement of Abdullah Ibrahim's 'The Wedding'

Source: All About Jazz
April 14, 2022

In a time when isolation and distancing seemed to define school settings, the Harborfields High School Jazz Band sought to cut against the grain and promote the joys inherent in the communal nature of music and creative expression. In early 2021, the band’s director—veteran educator and noted jazz journalist Dan Bilawsky—decided to follow through on a long-held ambition to commission an arrangement of Abdullah Ibrahim’s “The Wedding” from three-time GRAMMY-nominated composer/arranger/trombonist Alan Ferber. The beautiful results of Ferber’s writing were ...
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Education

2012 The 9th Taipei International Summer Jazz Academy Now Open For Apply!

Source: Taipei International Jazz Education & Promotion Association
April 25, 2012

The biggest jazz educational event in Taiwan is organized by experienced international jazz musicians making it the largest scale summer jazz program in Asia Styles, Skills, Play, Experience, Real, Direct... all you need to know about jazz is right here at Taipei International Summer Jazz Academy! Taipei International Summer Jazz Academy is the unique program in Asia from morning to midnight everyday, fruitful lessons and events with jazz greats coming from all over the world in one week! Group Lessons ...
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123

Interview

Trombonist Alan Ferber Interviewed at AAJ...And More!

Source: All About Jazz
June 28, 2010

Trombonist and composer Alan Ferber is a precise and thoughtful individual whose careful, deliberate expression is equally evident in both his insightful way of speaking--and his beautifully composed and executed recordings. As a freelancer, Ferber has tackled a wide breadth of music, everything from big band and small ensemble jazz to Broadway musicals and the beats of Dr. Dre.

As evidenced by his latest nonet recording, Chamber Songs: Music for Nonet and Strings (Sunny Side, 2010), Ferber is never satisfied ...
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214

Contest

Announcing the Winners of the "David Binney/Alan Ferber - In the Paint" Contest

Source: All About Jazz
September 25, 2009

330

Contest

Enter the Posi-Tone Records "David Binney/Alan Ferber - In the Paint" Giveaway Contest

Source: All About Jazz
August 23, 2009

All About Jazz members are invited to enter the Posi-Tone Records “David Binney/Alan Ferber - In the Paint“ giveaway contest starting today. We'll select FIVE winners at the conclusion of the contest on September 20th. Click here to enter the contest

(Following David Binney at AAJ automatically enters you in the contest.)

Good luck! Your Friends at Posi-Tone Records

About In the Paint Alto Sax sensation David Binney joins forces with Trombonist Alan Ferber on In ...
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185

Event

Alan Ferber Nonet w/ 10-PC String Orchestra

Source: All About Jazz
November 14, 2007

Trombonist/composer Alan Ferber will present new compositions and arrangements for his Nonet which will include a 10-piece string orchestra for this performance at the Brooklyn Lyceum. Ferber has a recent CD out on the Fresh Sound New Talent label entitled Alan Ferber Nonet: “The Compass." It has received wide critical acclaim from such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Time Out NY, Jazz Times, Jazziz, and the New York Times. As a trombonist, Ferber has performed and/or recorded with Don ...
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Performance / Tour

The Alan Ferber Nonet Live in New York - May 5th

Source: Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity
May 5, 2007

The Alan Ferber Nonet Live In New York May 5th! In Support and Celebration of Their New Recording The Compass (Fresh Sound New Talent) Alan Ferber (trombone/compositions), John Daversa (trumpet) Ben Wendel (tenor sax), Bob Sheppard (alto sax), Phil O'Connor (bass clarinet), Jamie Rosenn (guitar), Joe Bagg (piano), Harish Raghevan (bass), Tom Warrington (bass, 4/5 only), Mark Ferber (drums) Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 8:30 & 10:30 PM - Smalls 183 West 10th Street, $20, www.fatcatjazz.com Alan Ferber ...
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Performance / Tour

The Alan Ferber Nonet Live in New York April 25

Source: Jason Byrne, Red Cat Publicity
April 18, 2007

In Support and Celebration of Their New Recording The Compass (Fresh Sound New Talent) Wednesday, April 25, 2007 8:30 & 10:30 PM Smalls 183 West 10th Street $20

Alan Ferber-trombone, David Smith-trumpet, Loren Stillman-alto sax, Donny McCaslin-tenor sax, Jason Rigby - bass clarinet, Bruce Saunders - guitar, Bryn Roberts - piano, Alexis Cuadrado - bass, John Riley - drums This April 25, trombonist & composer Alan Ferber and his Nonet ...
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“Alan Ferber joins the new resurgence of talented young trombonists with vision and leadership.” --Mark F. Turner, All About Jazz