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Michael Eaton

Saxophone, composer, educator

About Me

Michael Eaton (b. 1981) is a Brooklyn, NY based saxophonist, composer, and educator active in contemporary jazz and free improvisation. He embraces a progressive and holistic vision of jazz, cognizant of the music's rich history, while he reaches for a personal outlook with an eye towards future possibilities.

Originally a native of the Kansas City, Missouri area, Eaton co-founded Mother Brain Records there with guitarist/electronics performer and composer Seth Andrew Davis. Mother Brain specializes in free improvisation, electronic music, new music, and hybrid genres. The label cultivates culture and music from Midwestern artists and beyond.

Eaton's latest releases for Mother Brain are “The Shapes Invent Themselves” with pianist Brad Whiteley, inspired by paintings by painter Pien van der Beek, and Stygian Gates for nonet, recorded live in 2022 at Scholes Street Studio in Brooklyn.

Michael leads Individuation, a contemporary jazz ensemble that combines modern, metric jazz with elements of postminimalism, world rhythms, electronics, and open improvisation.

The group's latest recording, The Phenomenal, was released in July 2024 on Mother Brain Records. The music pairs the quartet with three special guests: Tim Hagans (trumpet), Dave Scott (trumpet), and Judi Silvano (voice). Historically, The Phenomenal is the first studio meeting of Scott and Hagans. Paris Move's Thierry De Clemensat gave the album a five star/”Indispensable” rating, saying “Michael Eaton has an orchestral of his creations...Everything is intelligently thought out, structured, and finely crafted. We follow the instrumental solos like characters guiding us, and this music is nevertheless understandable to any audience.” The Phenomenal was financed in part by a New York Foundation of the Arts grant through the New York City Artist Corp.

Individuation's second album, Dialogical, was released in 2016 on Destiny Records. JazzTimes writes “'Serious play' may be a cliché by now, but it exemplifies the spirit that dances through this set,” and AllAboutJazz says “There is more than enough promising music on Dialogical to justify Eaton's status as a force to be reckoned with in today's jazz world.” The recording is made up of all original compositions and improvisations with a stellar cast of musicians, plus master guitarist Lionel Loueke on guitar and voice.

Michael's 2014 debut album on Destiny, Individuation, combines angular themes and propulsive modern jazz with intricate minimalistic vamps, freebop, prepared piano, and multi-layered structures. The band is joined on several cuts by a very special guest, NEA Jazz Master and saxophonist David Liebman. Scott Yanow (All Music Guide, Downbeat calls Individuation a “rather impressive debut, the start of what will surely be a very significant solo career”, and Vitto Lo Conte writes in Music Zoom that it signifies “a great debut album of a saxophonist and a quartet who seem to have all it takes to get noticed in the world of contemporary jazz”.

Eaton plays in Paraphrase, a modern jazz plus Third Stream duo for piano and saxophone with pianist Nicki Adams. After recording YouTube videos during the 2020 pandemic, the duo went into the studio to record Paraphrase, which was released in 2022 by Steeplechase Records. Their second recording, The Transcendental, was released in March 2024. It covers original compositions, arrangements of music by Joe Henderson, and a twelve tone title suite written by Eaton and inspired by abstract expressionist painter Richard Pousette-Dart. Their next recording, out in 2026, features trio with special guest Francisco Mela.

Michael has enjoyed a 10+ year association in NYC with flutist/composer/lyricist Cheryl Pyle in Beyond Group, a free improvised chamber group with rotating personnel and orchestrations. Musicians who have played with Beyond include guitarist Bern Nix, percussionist Newman Taylor Baker, pianist Roberta Piket, bassoonist Claire de Brunner, bassist Hilliard Greene, bass flutist Gene Coleman, baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, alto saxophonist Daniel Carter, soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome, flutist Jamie Baum, vocalist Judi Silvano, and drummer Reggie Sylvester, and composer/conductor Carman Moore.

For close to 15 years, Michael has collaborated with New York bassist/multi instrumentalist Adam Minkoff (Dweezil Zappa, Doyle Bramhall II, Graham Nash, Amy Helm) in a plethora of musical settings with. One band is Vaalbara, a post-70s Miles/New York downtown band that blends rock, jazz, funk, groove-based open free improvisation, and spoken word. Another is their free improvised trio, Anderson/Eaton/Minkoff, with drummer Nick Anderson, which released Hit Record in 2013. Minkoff and Eaton occasionally revive 1960s/70s soul jazz and acid jazz in Rockwood Organ Lounge, which usually includes guitarist Al Street, organist Todd Caldwell, and drummers Sean Dixon, Tony Mason, Bill Campbell, or Eric Kalb.

In May 2013, Minkoff celebrated the 100th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's seminal Rite of Spring by transcribing, arranging, and performing a rock octet edition of the piece, replete with Zappa-esque overtones. Following an electrifying, standing room only Rockwood Music Hall performance, the ensemble recorded the Rite plus a Stravinsky vocal suite in November 2014, where Michael played alto saxophone and flute. Til the End My Dear: Arrangements of Stravinsky, came out in April 2018 with an August 2018 release party at Nublu Classic.

Eaton and Minkoff jointly curate jazz concerts under the name “Michael Eaton and Adam Minkoff Present”. First, on June 8, 2015, they commemorated John Coltrane's iconic 1965 free jazz album, Ascension, at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn. The concert received coverage by the New York Times's Nate Chinen and the Village Voice's Jim Macnie, with the Voice citing it as one of the top nine concerts to see that week in New York City.

The ensemble's personnel brought together saxophonists Michael Attias, Daniel Carter, Sean Sondergger, James Brandon Lewis, and Briggan Krauss; trumpeters Dan Brantigan, Jonathan Finlayson, and Graham Haynes; guitarist Ava Mendoza; pianist Anthony Coleman; and drummers Nick Anderson and Calvin Weston.

On December 1, 2017, Eaton and Minkoff unfolded the late Coltrane repertory again, focusing on the 50th anniversary of two classics from 1967: Interstellar Space and Stellar Regions. Over the course of two sold out sets at Williamsburg's National Sawdust, they essayed seldom performed late Coltrane with a super- powered band of David Liebman, Marc Ribot, Jamie Saft, Nick Anderson, and Anthony Cole.

Michael earned a degree in Jazz Studies from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University-Bloomington in 2004. After moving to Brooklyn in 2008, he became involved in an array of creative music. He has performed at venues such as: Le Poisson Rouge, National Sawdust, Cornelia Street Cafe, 55 Bar, The Blue Note, Birdland Theater, Zinc Bar, The Kitano, ShapeShifter Lab, Drom, Small's Jazz Club, Rockwood Music Hall, Downtown Music Gallery, Spectrum NYC, iBeam, Symphony Center, Nublu, The Owl Music Parlor, Bowery Ballroom, Why Not Jazz, ABC No Rio, Somethin' Jazz, The Tea Lounge, Sycamore Hall, Club Groove, Bowery Poetry Club, Bar Chord, Spike Hill, The Fifth Estate, and The Underground Lounge.