A multi-instrumentalist specializing in the performance and education of contemporary improvisational music, Steve Alford spent multiple years on the road across the United States and Europe. He settled in Chicago in the late ’90s and began pursuing an in-depth study of harmony clarinets, appearing regularly on both saxophone and bass clarinet in the straight-ahead jazz, modern improvised music, and experimental indie-rock scenes across the Midwest.

Relocating to Asheville, North Carolina, after a decade in Illinois, Alford was serving as an adjunct professor of jazz and contemporary music at the University of North Carolina-Asheville while he completed his master’s degree in jazz at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Concurrently he developed a new contemporary music pedagogy focusing on multilateral ear training, multi-instrumental rhythm section methods class, "mind's ear" sonic exploration and melodic immersion. During a brief return to the northern Midwest United States, he took over as coordinator for jazz and contemporary improvisation studies at the University of Minnesota Morris, bringing his curriculum of modern multi-genre improvisation study grounded in traditional jazz roots to that university system.

During the past decade, he has composed, produced and recorded his most adventurous music to date including his acclaimed 11-piece modern big band, the multi-genre improvisation-based collective known as Rational Discourse; the E.Normus Trio, an alto clarinet, N/S Stick and drums trio within the punk-jazz genre; his quintet METAL, composed of two trash can drum systems, two double bassists, and Alford on electrified contra-alto clarinet and electrified English horn; and his new standards jazz trio and quartets, each reimagining small group jazz through an open and free approach to harmony while remaining grounded in tradition.

Steve Alford: Saxophone
Bill Bares: Piano
Quinn Sternberg: Bass
Alan Hall: Drums