Little Jumbo's creative music series functions as a cultural incubator—providing space for the genesis of new musical ideas. Every Monday and Tuesday, we showcase world-class musicians performing original, boundary-pushing work—completely free, no cover charge. This isn't background music; it's music in its purest form: live, unfiltered, and pushing the genre forward in real time. As an incubator, we create space where musicians explore new sonic territories and audiences encounter ideas they've never heard before. Democratizing access to exceptional art is who we are—it's the same philosophy behind everything we do.
The UNCA XTet under the direction of Jacob Rodriguez
Rylan Dunn - Saxophone
Juca Camera - Piano
Jack Kilbride - Guitar
Ethan Matthews - Bass
Cami Caudle - Drums
Forget everything you think you know about student ensembles. The UNCA XTET isn't a jazz band—it's a sonic petri dish, a living organism that expands and contracts like a musical amoeba, adding saxophones when the composition demands fire, subtracting guitars when space becomes the statement, morphing its cellular structure to serve whatever strange new harmonic life form is being born that week.
This is what happens when you give the next generation of jazz architects an "X" instead of a number—a variable, a placeholder for possibility, a permission slip to ignore every "that's not how we do it" that's ever held music hostage. The XTET doesn't conform to traditional jazz configurations because traditional configurations were designed for a world that no longer exists. Why limit yourself to quintet when the song demands seven voices? Why force eight players into a sextet box just because that's what fits on a stage?
These aren't students playing at being musicians—they're mad scientists conducting experiments in real-time molecular jazz reconstruction. They've been training under some of the most dangerous minds in modern improvisation, absorbing techniques like radiation, mutating traditional forms into something that makes bebop veterans nervous and fusion pioneers proud. Every rehearsal is a controlled explosion. Every performance is a hypothesis tested in front of a live audience.
The "X" doesn't stand for ten. It stands for unknown, for unexplored, for "we'll figure out how many musicians we need when we see what the music demands." It stands for the generation that grew up with the entire history of recorded music at their fingertips and decided that genre boundaries were suggestions written by people who ran out of imagination too early.
Watch them shape-shift through original compositions that treat Coltrane and Radiohead as equally valid ancestors. Watch them navigate improvised passages that require the kind of trust usually reserved for BASE jumpers and tightrope walkers. Watch them prove that the future of jazz isn't in museums or textbooks—it's in rooms where young musicians are still crazy enough to believe that music can be dangerous, transformative, and absolutely necessary.
This is the UNCA XTET. This is where the laboratory accidents become the next generation's textbooks. This is what happens when you stop asking "how many players do we need?" and start asking "what does the music need to become fully alive?"
[or: "What Happens When a High School Club Achieves Sentience and Summons Its Members Across Space-Time"]
In the year 2000, a progressive acoustic group called AVAS released one album on Little King Records and vanished into the multiverse. Now, twenty-five years later, the quantum entanglement that bound these musicians has reached critical mass, creating a temporal anomaly that threatens to collapse the space-time continuum unless they reconvene and complete the sonic ritual they began at a Nashville high school decades ago.
Jay Sanders—last seen communicating with entities from the music of the spheres—has been pulled from his Tuesday night quantum residency. Jason Krekel materialized mid-letterpress print, his guitar still vibrating at frequencies that transcend the four-track cassette dimension. Andy Pond arrived via slamgrass wormhole, his banjo emitting comfortable reggae radiation. Gaines Post was extracted from the Blue Mountains of Australia, where he'd been writing science fiction novels that were actually encoded messages from his flute about the nature of reality itself.
Supporting this cosmically improbable reunion: Zack Page, whose 275-gigs-per-year averaged bass lines have created gravitational wells across multiple timelines. Will Boyd, whose soul sax tradition channels frequencies from the Great American Sunday Hymnal Dimension where spirituals become literal doorways to transcendence. And Alan Hall, the percussion philosopher whose forty years of alchemical drumming—converting kinetic energy into bridges between the earthbound and ethereal—have finally revealed their true purpose: reopening the AVAS gateway.
What happens when Bill Frisell meets Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Väsen meets Raymond Scott meets your high school music club twenty-five years later in a bar that exists simultaneously in Asheville and several adjacent dimensions? The answer may destroy conventional understanding of music, shatter the known capabilities of wooden flutes, recalibrate the fundamental constants of bluegrass physics, and prove conclusively that the Acoustic Vibration Appreciation Society was never about acoustic vibrations—but rather about engineering a self-sustaining tear in the fabric of musical reality itself.
What began as a student club has evolved into a living organism, a sentient musical algorithm that spans decades and continents, pulling its scattered members back together like cosmic debris orbiting an invisible singularity. This isn't nostalgia. This is the universe demanding completion of an unfinished equation written in sound waves and string theory.
Witness the AVAS Continuum. Watch out for aliens. Bring your third eye. The fundamental vibrations are calling, and they're not taking "I moved to Australia" as an excuse.
[WARNING: This performance may cause spontaneous appreciation of sacred geometry, involuntary understanding of the music of the spheres, and the sudden realization that your high school music club was actually a prophetic vision of the future. Side effects include: seeing sounds, hearing colors, believing that banjos might actually save the universe, and the unsettling certainty that newgrass was always meant to be a trans-dimensional technology. No refunds for dimensional displacement. Existential dread not included but highly probable.]
When four musical travelers converge at Little Jumbo Bar, expect the conversation to wander through territories unmarked on any genre map. One brings a baritone voice seasoned by continents and street corners, another weaves bass lines that function more as gravitational fields than rhythm, a third treats the drum kit like a philosopher treats questions—with equal parts conviction and curiosity—and the fourth arrives carrying the collected wisdom of Asheville church music, Brooklyn beat labs, and 50 countries worth of sound.
This isn't just a quartet—it's four sonic cartographers who've learned that the most interesting destinations appear between the roads already traveled. Baritone reed meets chamber music architecture meets midnight voice memos meets the ghost of four-track cassette experiments, all of it converging in Little Jumbo's intimate geometry where every frequency matters and silence carries as much weight as sound.
In a room where proximity breeds revelation, prepare for an evening where Hard Bop fire dances with Congolese pulse, where hip-hop production philosophy informs jazz improvisation, and where four distinct musical obsessions discover they've been searching for the same thing all along. Sometimes the most profound conversations happen when no one's trying to speak the same language.
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall distill the pure essence of improvisational expression, converging as alchemists of sound, transmuting musical elements into their most essential forms. This quartet embodies the philosophical concept of quintessence—the fifth element beyond earth, air, fire, and water—representing the fundamental substance from which all musical reality springs.
Their original compositions crystallize the essential qualities of diverse influences, oscillating between through-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
The Core represents everything essential about Asheville's jazz DNA distilled into five musicians who understand that the best ensembles aren't just collections of individual talents—they're alchemical reactions where individual voices merge into something greater than their sum. This quintet embodies the mountain city's unique musical ecosystem, where Blue Ridge authenticity meets sophisticated harmonic exploration, where the intimacy of local venues allows for the kind of musical risk-taking that transforms standards into personal statements. Named for their ability to get to the heart of every song they touch, The Core strips away musical pretense to reveal the emotional architecture beneath, proving that jazz at its best isn't about showing off—it's about showing up completely for each moment, each phrase, each possibility that emerges when five musicians breathe together in perfect musical democracy. In Asheville's thriving jazz scene, The Core stands as both inheritors of tradition and pioneers of what's next, reminding audiences that the most profound musical experiences happen when virtuosity serves vulnerability, when technique becomes the vehicle for something infinitely more human.
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall distill the pure essence of improvisational expression, converging as alchemists of sound, transmuting musical elements into their most essential forms. This quartet embodies the philosophical concept of quintessence—the fifth element beyond earth, air, fire, and water—representing the fundamental substance from which all musical reality springs.
Their original compositions crystallize the essential qualities of diverse influences, oscillating between through-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
Casey Driessen: Sunday Bazaar at Little Jumbo is a monthly residency on the 3rd Sunday where music spills out like treasures in a bustling market. Fiddle loops, wild grooves, sonic oddities, and vibrant rhythms mix together in a swirl of color and sound. Tease your tastebuds with expertly crafted cocktails and soak in the cozy, electric atmosphere. No two nights are alike—wander in, follow your ears, and see what you discover.
When a percussion philosopher assembles his laboratory of sound, the walls between rhythm and melody begin to dissolve. This is music as inquiry rather than statement—four sonic investigators treating Little Jumbo's intimate geometry as a place where questions sound better than answers.
One arrives carrying four decades of conversations between drum heads and the spaces between continents, his sticks having traced rhythmic philosophies from Cologne jazz clubs to circus tent reveries, from teaching halls where young minds learned to bend time to stages where time learned to bend itself. Another brings the gravitational architecture of four strings, building invisible foundations sturdy enough to let everyone else float. A third treats the violin like an open-ended hypothesis, proving that the most interesting discoveries happen when classical training meets a willingness to sound beautifully wrong. And the fourth channels bebop through the lens of political science, his eighty-eight keys reminding us that jazz has always been intellectual discourse disguised as groove.
This isn't a band playing repertoire—it's an ensemble treating the stage like a petri dish where grooves breathe, textures mutate, and curiosity compounds into something that couldn't exist in any single musical tradition. European improvisation meets Appalachian immediacy. Scholarly rigor meets street-level spontaneity. Cirque Du Soleil's theatrical surrealism brushes against Harvard's ivory tower sensibilities, all of it refracted through the prism of musicians who've learned that convention is just another variable to manipulate.
In a room where proximity breeds revelation and every frequency finds its frequency-responder, prepare for an evening where rhythm becomes hypothesis, melody becomes evidence, and four veteran explorers prove that after four decades of making music, the most exciting sound is still the one you haven't heard yet.
Little Jumbo stays open on December 23rd, but the stage goes quiet—call it our Silent Night. Instead of music here, we're inviting you to the Diana Wortham Theatre for two performances (3pm & 7pm) where URSA Asheville makes its debut with the Constellations Orchestra, featuring our own Dr. Bill Bares bringing Vince Guaraldi's iconic Charlie Brown Christmas to life. This is what we do here every week—original music, collaborative spirit, creative risk-taking—just scaled up to a full orchestra with special guest Mike Clark from the original 1965 recordings. You'll get to do the Peanuts Dance with a full orchestra, hear Guaraldi's melodies reinterpreted with warmth and wonder, and support URSA's mission to uplift the arts community in the wake of Hurricane Helene. We'll be back to our regular programming soon enough, but for one night, let's all go see what happens when this community's creative energy gets a bigger stage.
When Brian Felix sits behind a Hammond B3, something curious happens: the ghost of Jimmy Smith nods approvingly while Jimmy McGriff's ghost mutters "yeah, but can he fix the Leslie when it breaks?" Felix spent his formative years studying piano with Kenny Barron at Rutgers—which is a bit like learning carpentry from a master craftsman and then deciding to become a plumber. Different instrument, same devotion to the craft, equally likely to involve fixing things that leak.
After cutting his teeth in the relentless touring circus of OM Trio (sharing stages with everyone from Tower of Power to Umphrey's McGee, which is basically jazz education via trial by fire and funk), Felix took the scenic route through graduate school, earning a doctorate while pondering the eternal question: "What happens when rock becomes jazz?" The answer, it turns out, involves a lot of drawbars, a Leslie speaker that weighs more than most relationships, and the kind of bass pedal work that makes your chiropractor wince.
Now a professor at UNC Asheville—where he teaches everything from jazz theory to the Grateful Dead, because academic versatility is just a fancy term for "willing to talk about music until everyone else leaves the room"—Felix leads his organ trio with the understanding that the best music happens when you stop trying to impress people and start trying to make them feel something. His left hand walks bass lines, his right hand builds harmonic cathedrals, and somewhere in between, gospel church pews start swaying in jazz clubs.
This isn't nostalgia. This is a guy with a doctorate, two kids, and a very patient wife, proving that organ jazz still has something to say—even if that something occasionally requires an extension cord, a backup fuse, and a sense of humor about the whole enterprise.
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall distill the pure essence of improvisational expression, converging as alchemists of sound, transmuting musical elements into their most essential forms. This quartet embodies the philosophical concept of quintessence—the fifth element beyond earth, air, fire, and water—representing the fundamental substance from which all musical reality springs.
Their original compositions crystallize the essential qualities of diverse influences, oscillating between through-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
The Soul Jazz Revival rings in 2026
Velvet curtains between dimensions. Four sonic alchemists stirring champagne bubbles into galaxies. When the clock chases midnight and the year dissolves into pure possibility, there's only one question that matters: where will you be when the groove takes over? This is the moment when midnight stops being a deadline and becomes a threshold. When the rhythms don't just move you—they rewrite your molecular structure. Soul jazz as time travel, as prophecy, as that feeling you get when you realize the party isn't ending, it's just shapeshifting into something more beautiful than the architects of soul ever dreamed possible.
Five masters of the moment—Jacob Rodriguez's sax melting time and space, Quinn Sternberg's bass threading through dimensions, Joe Enright's drums painting rhythm as color, Alex Taub finding infinity between the keys, Andy Page's guitar weaving stories from Montreux to these mountains—converge to transform the countdown into something closer to levitation than celebration.
The room leans in. The walls remember. The future arrives at Little Jumbo. New Year's Eve. Where the revival isn't just musical—it's molecular.
The Core represents everything essential about Asheville's jazz DNA distilled into five musicians who understand that the best ensembles aren't just collections of individual talents—they're alchemical reactions where individual voices merge into something greater than their sum. This quintet embodies the mountain city's unique musical ecosystem, where Blue Ridge authenticity meets sophisticated harmonic exploration, where the intimacy of local venues allows for the kind of musical risk-taking that transforms standards into personal statements. Named for their ability to get to the heart of every song they touch, The Core strips away musical pretense to reveal the emotional architecture beneath, proving that jazz at its best isn't about showing off—it's about showing up completely for each moment, each phrase, each possibility that emerges when five musicians breathe together in perfect musical democracy. In Asheville's thriving jazz scene, The Core stands as both inheritors of tradition and pioneers of what's next, reminding audiences that the most profound musical experiences happen when virtuosity serves vulnerability, when technique becomes the vehicle for something infinitely more human.
Casey Driessen: Sunday Bazaar at Little Jumbo is a monthly residency on the 3rd Sunday where music spills out like treasures in a bustling market. Fiddle loops, wild grooves, sonic oddities, and vibrant rhythms mix together in a swirl of color and sound. Tease your tastebuds with expertly crafted cocktails and soak in the cozy, electric atmosphere. No two nights are alike—wander in, follow your ears, and see what you discover.
