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Jason Rigby
Jason Rigby is an assured New York-based musician whose jazz mixes conventional and “outside” improvisation in stirring fashion. His recent release “Translucent Space” (Fresh Sound Records), is garnering rave reviews and applause, putting Rigby’s name firmly on the map of New York’s creative music scene. Rigby’s individuated saxophone tone and improvisational approach draw inspiration from such jazz pantheon figures as John Coltrane, Joe Henderson and Dewey Redman, and he has been described as displaying “a brilliant virtuosity & flexibility while handling some very complex harmonic lines & intervals.” (George W. Carroll, The Musician’s Ombudsman, May 06) As an impressive composer meriting wider recognition, Rigby has developed his compositional style after having listened long and hard to primary compositional influences Wayne Shorter, Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, and classical greats Mahler, Bartok and Shostakovich. Originally from Cleveland, OH, his formal music studies were done at Youngstown State University in Ohio, DePaul University in Chicago and the Manhattan School of Music. Rigby has studied saxophone and composition privately with Dick Oatts, Mike Abene and Rich Perry and was voted “Best College Jazz Instrumentalist” by DownBeat magazine in 1999. Just 32-years-old, Rigby is active on the New York jazz scene. Career highlights so far include working with the Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra; playing in Aretha Franklin’s band at Radio City Music Hall; and participating in a Cameron Brown-helmed project concerning Don Cherry jazz from the mid-‘60s. Rigby’s also a regular sideman with the Scott Dubois Quintet and at times with Mike Holober’s Gotham Jazz Orchestra, the Kris Davis Group and Eivind Opsvik’s Overseas, and the list of colleagues with whom he has performed only starts with notables David Leibman and Tony Malaby. He has taught at the New School (NYC), City College of NY and Stony Brook University and maintains a private jazz saxophone studio in NYC.
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Miho Hazama M_Unit: Beyond Orbits
by Angelo Leonardi
Uno degli eventi al Monterey Jazz Festival del 2021 è stato il concerto dell'M_Unit di Miho Hazama, la giovane compositrice e bandleader giapponese che s'è imposta tra le figure più innovative della sua generazione. In quell'occasione Hazama ha presentato la suite in tre movimenti “Exoplanet" che--incisa poi in studio--costituisce il fulcro del disco appena pubblicato dalla Edition Records. Chi conosce i suoi lavori di questi anni, sa quanto la scrittura della bandleader risulti coinvolgente per l'abilità di ...
read moreMiho Hazama's M_Unit: Beyond Orbits
by Chris May
Beyond Orbits is the fêted composer and conductor Miho Hazama's fourth album with M_Unit. She founded the band in 2012, two years after moving from Tokyo to New York and while she was still studying for a masters in jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Hazama released M_Unit's first album in 2013. The band's third, Dancer In Nowhere (Sunnyside, 2019), was nominated for a Grammy. Among her other achievements, Hazama was in 2019 appointed chief ...
read moreMark Guiliana Jazz Quartet: The Sound Of Listening
by Chris May
There is something tantalisingly out of reach on the Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet's The Sound Of Listening. It is not “difficult" music, but it is cryptic. After multiple replays the code remains unbroken. It seems something important is going on but... what exactly? It is rather like encountering Guiliana's fellow New Yorker, tenor saxophonist Oded Tzur for the first time. The music is not alien, but there is something deeply different about it. Coincidentally, Guiliana's pianist on ...
read moreMike Holober & Balancing Act: Don't Let Go
by Jack Bowers
With Don't Let Go, pianist Mike Holober and the octet Balancing Act seemed to have found an ideal way to cross-breed classical motifs and contemporary jazz to produce a pleasurable listening experience. Then he added lyrics. Granted, not all lyrics are superfluous—even those that are either nebulous or indecipherable, as is too often the case here. It's simply that some listeners may be more receptive to an alternative in the form of, say, Marvin Stamm's trumpet, Dick Oatts' or Jason ...
read moreMike Holober: Hiding Out
by Angelo Leonardi
Un decennio dopo Quake (Sunnyside 2009), l'arrangiatore e bandleader Mike Holober riporta sotto i riflettori la newyorchese Gotham Jazz Orchestra in uno scintillante doppio compact che raccoglie due ricercate composizioni ("Flow" in tre movimenti, “Hiding Out" in cinque) e tre brani medio-lunghi (tra cui il delizioso “Caminhos Cruzados" di Jobim in due versioni). Come è ovvio che sia, l'organico registra alcune sostituzioni. Tra i nuovi ingressi il trombettista Marvin Stamm, i sassofonisti Jason Rigby e Bill Drewes, il ...
read moreMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Jerome Wilson
Mike Holober is a celebrated composer and arranger who has worked for ensembles like the Westchester Jazz Orchestra in New York and the WDR and HR Big Bands in Germany. He is also the leader and founder of the Gotham Jazz Orchestra which here makes its first appearance on record in ten years. Holober makes this return a fruitful one, coming up with a 2CD set featuring two long suites, both with themes involving American landscapes. The first ...
read moreMike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Hiding Out
by Jack Bowers
Mike Holober has been Hiding Out rather openly for the past ten years or so, waiting for the proper time to gather together his world-class Gotham Jazz Orchestra and record for the first time since 2009's widely acclaimed album Quake (Sunnyside), in which his picturesque compositions and arrangements were compared favorably to those of Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, to name only two. In the interim, Holober has hardly been sitting on his hands, serving time as director of New ...
read moreIn-Demand Bassist Matt Aronoff Celebrates His Debut Album Featuring Performances By Jason Rigby, Yago Vazquez, And Henry Cole
Source:
AMT Public Relations
Known for being, “greatly sensitive, with huge ears and a feel for accompaniment (All About Jazz),” bassist/composer Matt Aronoff celebrates his leap from sideman to bandleader in his debut album Morning Song (TBR 06.03.22). Recorded in 2018 in front of a live audience at The Nest, Morning Song serves as the culmination of Aronoff’s weekly, late-night jam session in Brooklyn. A highly sought-after acoustic and electric bassist, Aronoff is joined by some of today’s most compelling voices: saxophonist Jason Rigby, ...
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"Rigby is strong and confident, but he also allows risk-taking, moving comfortably out of the mainstream into freer territories. Given this stellar debut, it will be quite interesting to see where Rigby's musical ventures will lead next." - Mark F. Turner, AllAboutJazz "...the strength of Translucent Space lies in its coherence, intellect and accessibility—making it one of the year’s most remarkable debuts." - John Kelman, AllAboutJazz "Rigby's burly tenor tone and searching improvisations recall the expressionistic flights of Ornette Coleman and Joe Henderson." - John Murph, DownBeat "Rigby flirts with the same stratospheric heights Wayne Shorter explored with Miles." - J Hunter, AllAboutJazz "...the saxophonist's quintet sustains a daunting finesse while swinging full tilt on the new The Sage." - Jim Macnie, The Village Voice "Jason Rigby is a bold adventurous composer and saxophonist." - Jerry D'Souza, AllAboutJazz "He blends styles artfully and gives them a tangent and direction that are out of the ordinary and, in doing so, he brings in a perspective that is as exciting as it is satisfying." - Jerry D'Souza, AllAboutJazz "Translucent Space (Fresh Sound-New Talent), the new album by the saxophonist and bass clarinetist Jason Rigby, doesn't come by its name casually; it's an album of airy, often diaphanous music, with faint echoes of early fusion and Third Stream." - Nate Chinen, NY Times "A robust tenor/soprano stylist in the classic Post-War mold of John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, Rigby also embraces the harmonically unfettered lyricism of Ornette Coleman
Primary Instrument
Saxophone, tenor
Willing to teach
Advanced only
Yuto Mitomi
saxophone, tenorPhotos
Music
Twenty Twenty
From: Songs, Hymns And Ballads Volume...By Jason Rigby
Compelled
From: Hiding OutBy Jason Rigby
When There Were Trains
From: Balancing ActBy Jason Rigby
Videos
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Jason Rigby
Instrument: Saxophone, tenor
Born: December 2, 1974
