Webber/Morris Big Band

The New York–based Webber/Morris Big Band draws together roughly seventeen players under the joint direction of Anna Webber and Angela Morris. Webber, a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose work bridges avant-garde jazz and new classical music, also directs Anna Webber’s Simple Trio alongside John Hollenbeck and Matt Mitchell; several releases have appeared under her name, among them the widely praised 2019 septet recording Clockwise. Morris, likewise a composer, flutist, and saxophonist who began on violin, crafts pieces that place avant-jazz, new music, and pop side by side or fuse them outright; her trio TMT, completed by pianist Cat Toren and drummer Anthony Taddeo, released the 2019 art-book-and-double-disc project Asleep in the Dust in partnership with visual artist Jerry Birchfield. On stage and in the studio the ensemble regularly features a cross-section of New York’s leading improvisers, among them trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, bassist Adam Hopkins, trombonist Jen Baker, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, and guitarist Dustin Carlson.

Convening for the first time in 2015, the group set out to examine both contemporary composition and earlier vanguard explorations spanning jazz, classical minimalism, pop, noise, and further idioms. Improvisation and fully notated passages are combined in unconventional proportions, while sources ranging from poetry to mathematics supply the conceptual ground for many pieces. Although the instrumental layout follows that of the classic big band, the resulting texture frequently shifts into unexpected territory; the saxophonists alternate between occupying the tenor position and conducting their own compositions. Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf Music issued the band’s first album, Both Are True, in 2020.