Josh Sinton

Josh Sinton, a native of Southern New Jersey, born in 1971, is a creative musician who
specializes in playing the baritone saxophone and bass clarinet. Growing up, his musical
inspirations were his father’s record collection, his brothers’ record collections and
watching his father play stride piano at parties. There wasn’t anyone else playing music so
to this day Sinton remains mystified that the music bug stuck at all.

He studied composition at the University of Chicago and improvisation at the AACM in the
1990’s and then proceeded to carve out a niche for himself in Chicago writing and
performing music for dance (with Julia Mayer) and theater (at Steppenwolf Studio and
Bailiwick Repertory) as well as performing and studying with local musicians such as Fred
Anderson, Ken Vandermark, Ari Brown and Cameron Pfiffner. He would leave Chicago
during this time for extended backpacking trips around Europe and India and found a lot of
useful information for his later work.

Determined to overcome his technical shortcomings, he gave all this up and moved to
Boston in 1999 to resume studies at the New England Conservatory. He spent five years in
Boston and met, played and studied with a variety of folks including Steve Lacy, Ran Blake,
Dominique Eade, Jerry Bergonzi, Bob Moses, Jim Hobbs and the Either Orchestra.

Since then, Sinton has lived in Brooklyn, New York. Currently Sinton leads his Predicate
Trio (with Tom Rainey and Christopher Hoffman), collaborates with Guillermo Gregorio,
plays in a collaborative trio with Todd Neufeld and Giacomo Merega and plays in Adam
Hopkins’ band Crickets. He has also founded and led the bands Ideal Bread, musicianer,
holus-Bolus and Senhor Vasques. He is busy writing new music for himself and his
collaborators as well as contributing essays to the websites of Brooklyn Rail, Darcy James
Argue, Ethan Iverson’s Do The Math, Destination: Out and Sound American.

He’s been fortunate enough to have been a member of Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society,
the Nate Wooley Quintet, the Andrew D’Angelo DNA Orchestra and Anthony Braxton’s
Tricentric Orchestra. With these groups he’s travelled to several countries in Europe and
South America as well as played many festivals (Moers, Newport, BMW, Bergamo, Tampere
Jazz Happening, etc.). Sinton is proud of the collaborators he’s been able to work with (Kirk
Knuffke, Tomas Fujiwara, Chad Taylor, Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Jeremiah
Cymerman, Josh Roseman, Harris Eisenstadt, Roswell Rudd, James Fei, Denman Maroney,
Han-Earl Park, Greg Tate, Curtis Hasselbring, Mike Pride, Jon Irabagon).

He was a member of the Douglass Street Music Collective and hosted hundreds of concerts
over the course of 7 years in Brooklyn. His work has been recognized by Downbeat (Critics’
and Readers’ Poll), Jazz Times (Critics’ Poll) and El Intruso (International Critics’ Poll) and
has been discussed in The Wire, Signal to Noise, Point of Departure, and the New York Times.

Sinton defines himself as a "creative musician" rather than a jazz musician and has done so
since 2011. His reasons for this are varied and personal. Suffice to say, friendly
experiencers can label him what they will. Sinton will just continue creating sounds with
the goal of wasting nobody's time.