DARIUS JONES
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BIO
Forthcoming in September 2023, Jones' new album fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s̶ suite but sacred) will be released by Northern Spy and We Jazz Records. Jones was the 2022 MATA Festival artist in residence and festival curator, where he premiered Colored School No. 3 (Extra Credit). In 2021, Jones released Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) on Northern Spy Records.
Jones has collaborated with 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, International Contemporary Ensemble and many more.
Jones was a JJA Jazz Awards finalist nominee for Alto Saxophonist of the Year in 2022 and 2013, the 2019 Downbeat Annual Critics Poll winner for Rising Star Alto Saxophone, and The New York Times named Jones among the Best Live Jazz Performances of 2017 for his Vision Festival performance with Farmers by Nature. Jones has been featured in Pitchfork, The Wire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Downbeat, among others. Critics have called him "robustly creative" (Nate Chinen, New York Times) and "one of NYC's most incisive and passionate saxists" (Time Out New York). AllAboutJazz.com reviewer Troy Collins writes, "Jones has set the stage for a winning series of albums designed to document his rise as one of the most impressive and unique voices of our time." Jones has been a contributing writer with featured essays, “Year of Demoon (My Life Inside 2020)” in The Brooklyn Rail (September 2021) and “We Can Change the Country" New Music Box (October 2020).
Jones graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies in 2003, earning a Master of Arts in Jazz Performance/Composition from New York University in 2008, where he also taught New Music Improvisation as an adjunct professor. Jones taught saxophone and improvisation at Columbia University in 2017, and currently teaches in the College of Performing Arts and Contemporary Music at The New School.
Jones’ music is a confrontation against apathy and ego, hoping to inspire authenticity that compels us to be better humans.
Darius Jones has created a recognizable voice as a critically acclaimed saxophonist and composer by embracing individuality and innovation in the tradition of Black music. Jones has been awarded the Van Lier Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence and commission, Western Front residency and commission, French-American Jazz Exchange Award, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation Award, and a Fromm Music Foundation commission from Harvard University. Jones has received acclaim for not only his studio albums featuring music and images evocative of Black Futurism, but also for his commissioned work as a composer throughout the United States and Canada.
PRESS
"The great emotionality and the beautiful mess that dominate his style are foiled by the enormous ease with which everything is played... one of the best albums this year." – The Free Jazz Collective
"Witty, soulful and brimming with invention, an inspired marriage of creative music and song." – The Wire
"4-Stars. Today, he demonstrates that his musical persona will not be easily pigeonholed." – Downbeat
Varty, Alexander. "Saxophone great Darius Jones nurtures string connections on the West Coast." Stir, June 15, 2022.
"Jones makes his point by showing, not just telling. His compositions are so intensely honed and performed they seem to talk, moan, and cry about intimate experience in ways we might expect to find in novels, not instrumental records." - Pitchfork
“A solo album is one of the most personal statements a jazz musician can make. They can be documentations of technical achievement, or a means to get compositions down on tape and hopefully inspire others to record them later; they can be sonic experiments, using the space in which they’re recorded as an instrument; or they can be heartfelt performances of beloved tunes. With nobody else around, they’re more than anything a confrontation between the artist and the audience, or between the artist and themselves. Alto saxophonist Darius Jone’s Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) is all of these things and more.” – Bandcamp Daily
"The sound is breathtaking. The space, color, intensity, and every single note Darius Jones plays is not only a note, but a pure vibration that goes right into our bones and straight to our heart, taking the time and space its needs, so it can be purely felt in its intention, strength, and depth." – Best of Jazz
