Musical Style: Jazz, Jazz Fusion

While navigating 30 years,16 members, 27 albums, 11 European Tours and sometimes 300 shows a year in the U.S., Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey has become an institution in modern music. Defined by evolution and change, the band has invented it’s own language, one which defies genre. Beginning in Tulsa, OK in 1994 as a funky octet with MCs and horns, JFJO became an instrumental trio in 1999, a quartet in 2007 and expanded to a 9-piece ensemble for 2011's acclaimed Race Riot Suite. Celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2014, the band returned to the trio setting with two critically loved albums one of which, Millions: Live In Denver, sold out it's International Record Store Day Release. Now in it's 30th year as a band, JFJO returns to the well known trio line up of Reed Mathis (Bass & Guitar), Brian Haas (Piano) and Jason Smart (Drums). Known as the OG Jacob Fred Trio, this is the version of the band that took EVERYTHING to the next level. This is the jazz trio that U.S. News and World Report called the "#1 New Star of Jazz in the World."

JFJO burns with a quiet intensity rather than dramatically explodes. The musicians play with a coiled looseness, improvising with quicksilver yet deliberate force. You can hear the band’s power and inventiveness creatively eroding structure, and the tension produced from that is exhilarating. If JFJO isn’t moving jazz forward, it is shifting its center of gravity interestingly askew.

JAZZTIMES

“…the group has matured into one of the finest and most exciting jazz groups around.” – Billboard Magazine

“Frankly, it's hard to think of a more original, fresh-sounding band."- All About Jazz

"Haas and company concoct a sonic galaxy far more kaleidoscopic than might seem doable for a trio." -Downbeat Magazine

“Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey weave the kind of impressionistic, imaginative new jazz that shatters any kind of identity, much less categories and classifications.”

— Chicago Sun Times

Brian Haas, piano

Reed Mathis, bass & guitar

Jason Smart, drums