Sam Eastmond

Biography
Articles

Sam Eastmond is a composer, arranger, bandleader, trumpet player and producer creating music incorporating a variety of genres including jazz, klezmer, cartoon, rock, surf, world, jewish and Downtown influences and composed and improvised sections into music that he identifies as avant-garde or Radical Jewish Culture.

He co-founded and leads the Spike Orchestra, a large ensemble who have recorded three studio albums since 2014, their debut Ghetto (Spike Records) and two collaborations with New York legend John Zorn as part of his Masada Book on Tzadik Label, Cerberus: The Spike Orchestra Play Masada Book Two and Binah from the forthcoming Masada Book Three series.

Other current projects include TORU a free improvisation group releasing an album a month, and Gulgoleth, a quartet comprised of the Spike Orchestra rhythm section playing a new Book of music composed for this outrageous group of players, album being recorded this year.

Moss Freed / Union Division: Micromotives

Read "Micromotives" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 11, 2023

A question any composer for improvisers must face is whether they can create something more worthwhile than what they might come up with if left to themselves. It can be a tough call. For some, such as Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra or Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, the ultimate conclusion was no, while for others such as Anthony Braxton and Barry Guy the answer has been far less clear cut. British guitarist Moss Freed falls somewhere between the two ...