Date
Sat, June 13, 2026
This event is made possible by support from Blue Fox Arts
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North Star Jazz presents a special workshop with Otherlands Trio, featuring Stephan Crump on acoustic bass, Darius Jones on alto saxophone, and Eric McPherson on drums. Open to the public.
"Otherlands Trio is magic."
"A massive veteran trio…not just immense players, but two of the city's great creative music composers, pushing it into wondrous, unexpected but also inviting spaces."
"As a bassist and composer, Mr. Crump avoids obvious routes but manages never to lose his way."
For this workshop centered on their approach to making music, Otherlands Trio will explore ideas related to spontaneous composition, ensemble connection, and rhythmic, thematic, and structural development.
Through discussion and demonstration, the trio will share their philosophies and processes. One bedrock example is concentric orbiting, which allows them to build magnetism and groove while remaining free to continuously shapeshift as they develop a piece.
All questions will be welcomed.
Otherlands Trio is a new creative formation featuring veteran instrumentalist/composers Stephan Crump, Darius Jones, and Eric McPherson. Their dynamic, ever-evolving, magnetically charged music emerges from a pursuit of ego dissolution and spiritual communion.
Stephan Crump is a Grammy-nominated bassist and composer, collaborator and bandleader, soloist and educator, based in New York City since 1994. A Memphis native, Crump fell for New York's fecund scenes during his first semester at Amherst College, when he would drive hours to play late-night, weekday gigs in the West Village. He knew this is where he'd make his life and career.
Working beyond genre, he has become a crucial component of multiple New York music communities in and beyond jazz. For two decades, Crump recorded and toured as a third of Vijay Iyer's acclaimed trio, helping to build that band's global reputation. Meanwhile, many of his own ensembles—Rhombal, with Tyshawn Sorey, Ellery Eskelin, and Adam O'Farrill; Secret Keeper, with Mary Halvorson; Rosetta Trio, with Jamie Fox and Liberty Ellman—prize versatility and voicings in a manner that more traditional configurations often do not. His Borderlands Trio, with pianist Kris Davis and drummer Eric McPherson, brings this same mentality to a more familiar setting. Other collaborators have included Miguel Zenón, Gordon Gano, Patti Austin, Johnny Clyde Copeland, Wadada Leo Smith, Jim Campilongo, David Gilmore, Sam Newsome, Steve Lehman, Cory Smythe, Ingrid Laubrock, Okkyung Lee, Mat Maneri, and Ches Smith.
Crump's physical and emotional connection to the bass is abundant through the new sextet Slow Water, which explores ecology and environment through composition and group communication. He teaches On Magnetism, a course in connecting more deeply through one's instrument, after a lifetime of doing just that, and lives still in Brooklyn with his wife and collaborator, the singer Jen Chapin, and their two sons.
Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of African-American music.
Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Commission, Jerome Artist-in-Residence at Roulette, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, and the Fromm Music Foundation commission at Harvard University. Jones has released a string of diverse recordings featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism. His work as a new music composer for voice culminated in a major debut performance at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Jones has collaborated with artists including Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Andrew Cyrille, Craig Taborn, Wet Ink Ensemble, Jason Moran, Trevor Dunn, Dave Burrell, Eric Revis, Matthew Shipp, Marshall Allen, Nasheet Waits, Branford Marsalis, Travis Laplante, Fay Victor, Cooper-Moore, Matana Roberts, JD Allen, Nicole Mitchell, Georgia Ann Muldrow, and many more.
The New York Times named Jones among the Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017 for his Vision Festival performance with Farmers by Nature. In 2018, Darius premiered across the United States a major new composition entitled LawNOrder, a dramatic commentary on social justice and American politics. Jones' music is a confrontation against apathy and ego, hoping to inspire authenticity that compels us to be better humans.
A native of NYC, Eric McPherson came to prominence apprenticing with legendary saxophonist and educator, Jackie McLean, and innovative pianist and composer Andrew Hill. Those foundational experiences cultivated Eric into one of the leading drummers in contemporary creative music.
Eric continues the legacy of the musical giants who came before him. As well as performing and teaching internationally with an array of today's leading contemporary creative musicians, Eric teaches privately and at the University of Hartford's Jackie McLean Institute.
