Jason Robinson's Janus Ensemble

The music of American composer, saxophonist, flutist, and scholar Jason Robinson ("rugged and scintillating," New York Times) thrives in the fertile overlaps between improvisation and composition, acoustic music and electronics, tradition and experimentalism. Initially a devotee of post-1960s jazz and creative music, Robinson is celebrated for bringing together various historical directions in jazz--bebop, post-bop, the avant-garde--with an improvisatory and compositional sensibility drawn from and extending the languages of John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Lester Young. His musical interests, however, span far and wide. Born in 1975, he is a critically acclaimed distinctive voice in a generation of creative musicians in equal dialogue with jazz, popular music, experimental music, and electronic music.

Jason Robinson’s Janus Ensemble ranges in size from quartet to full 11-piece ensemble featuring pianists Joshua White and Angelica Sanchez, guitarist Liberty Ellman, bassist Drew Gress, percussionists Ches Smith and George Schuller, trombonist Michael Dessen, trombonist and tubist Bill Lowe, tubist Marcus Rojas, and fellow reedists Marty Ehrlich, JD Parran, and Oscar Noriega. Members of the group reside across the United States, from California, to New York City, to small town New England.

The group's latest releases are the first two albums in Robinson's Ancestral Numbers composition series, Ancestral Numbers I and Ancestral Numbers II, the first released in May 2024 and the second on 8 October 2024, both on Playscape Recordings and featuring a quintet version of the ensemble with Robinson, trombonist Michael Dessen, pianist Joshua White, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Ches Smith.

$15 in advance, $20 at the door. Students $10 and kids under 18 free at the door.

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