Andrew Rathbun

Jazz saxophonist Andrew Rathbun displays a vigorous, technically assured approach to improvisation rooted in the intricate harmonic language of post-bop. During the 2000s he began attracting notice through his own ensembles on the 2002 release Sculptures and the 2009 album Where We Are Now. In addition to his performing career he has held fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Banff Center while maintaining a faculty position at Western Michigan University. SteepleChase has issued numerous acclaimed recordings by him, among them the 2018 quartet date Character Study alongside Tim Hagans and the 2020 collaboration Northern Noir with Ran Blake.

Toronto-born and raised, Rathbun took up the saxophone during childhood. A Canada Council for the Arts grant enabled him to relocate to Boston in 1991, where he enrolled at the New England Conservatory and studied with Jimmy Giuffre and George Russell. Subsequent engagements included work on the road and in the studio with Jeff Hirshfield, Kenny Wheeler, John Abercrombie, and Ingrid Jensen. Between 1994 and 1997 he also instructed at the University of Maine prior to joining the faculty of the Amadeus Conservatory in Westchester, New York. His first album under his own name, Scatter Some Stones, appeared in 1999; the following year he issued the experimental True Stories, which incorporated musical settings of two poems by Margaret Atwood. Later projects of comparable depth and intricacy encompassed Sculptures in 2002 and Renderings in 2005.

From 2006 onward Rathbun has maintained a consistent schedule of small-group recordings for SteepleChase, among them Shadow Forms, Where We Are Now, and Numbers & Letters. He completed a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory and earned a D.M.A. from the Manhattan School of Music. Alongside his ongoing teaching duties at Western Michigan University he has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Banff Center. In 2018 he recorded the quartet album Character Study featuring trumpeter Tim Hagans. That same affinity for classical repertoire led him to join pianist Lori Sims and saxophonist Jeremy Siskind on 2020’s Impressions of Debussy, while a further partnership that year produced the duet session Northern Noir with pianist Ran Blake.