Based in New York City, Weather Vest is a mixed-wind quartet that explores commonality between classical chamber music, small group jazz, and folk music.
Created as a collaboration between classical and jazz musicians, the group features an unusual and flexible instrumentation: soprano and alto saxophones with tenor and bass trombones. Our repertoire illustrates a curatorial sensibility by reclaiming and reconstructing lesser known gems from throughout musical history, juxtaposing them with our own original compositions and commissioning projects. All four members contribute arrangements, ranging from solo piano and guitar pieces to the music of symphony orchestras and big bands. Weather Vest emphasizes an inventive, democratic approach toward programming by recategorizing composers, aligning Shostakovich and Lili Boulanger with Raymond Scott and Thelonius Monk; Hank Williams with Stravinsky and Morton Feldman; among many others. Incorporating free improvisations that create associations between disparate musical and cultural lineages is a central theme, linking genres, composers, and contemplative questions, both past and present. Weather Vest’s hope is to render music of the past relevant, meditative, and alive in its relationship to the present.
Our quartet members offer unique expertise and wide-ranging experience as performers, educators, composers and arrangers. As interpreters of new music, our members perform with highly adventurous groups such as International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Deviant Septet, Argento Chamber Ensemble and the Manhattan Saxophone Quartet. In the field of jazz, Weather Vest members perform with artists such as Slide Hampton, Tom Harrell, Wynton Marsalis, Steve Coleman, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Mingus Big Band and Roy Hargrove Big Band. Classically, our members perform with the Metropolitan Opera, The Knights, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, New York City Ballet and New York City Opera. The breadth of our collective experience informs the direction of Weather Vest and provides the foundation for our exploration.