Consider the distances traveled to arrive at this particular room on this particular Monday night. A trumpet that has filled Madison Square Garden and the Sydney Opera House alongside Michael Bublé, now playing three feet from your cocktail glass. A baritone saxophone that has shared air with Aretha Franklin, Robert Glasper, and Ambrose Akinmusire, now threading low-register phrases through the murmur of a crowded bar. A piano that might have stayed silent forever if a freak lip injury hadn't ended a promising trumpet career and sent a political science major from Capitol Hill back to his parents' house in Nebraska to woodshed eight hours a day until his hands could do what his mouth no longer could. A bass that has crossed every ocean and touched every continent, anchored gypsy jazz and heavy metal and everything unnamed in between. And drums that came to a guitarist who switched instruments and discovered that rhythm was the question he'd been trying to answer all along.
The Core is what happens when five musicians with no business being in the same band end up becoming the most natural ensemble in Asheville.
Justin Ray and Jacob Rodriguez came to these mountains on the same wave — Bublé bandmates who fell for Western North Carolina during a break from touring arenas in forty-five countries. Ray, an Albuquerque native trained at Berklee and USC, had already logged years on the Los Angeles scene with Peter Erskine and Kurt Elling before the arena years began. Rodriguez, a San Antonio kid who grew up on his brother's NWA and Guns N' Roses records before an eighth-grade Duke Ellington album rearranged his priorities, earned dual degrees at the Manhattan School of Music under Joe Temperley. Both chose Asheville. Both now teach at UNC Asheville. Both understand that a room this size demands more honesty than any stadium ever could.
Bill Bares arrived from another direction entirely. A military brat who landed in Omaha, he was good enough on trumpet to make the McDonald's All-American Band before the injury that rerouted his life. Amherst College gave him a political science degree. D.C. jazz clubs gave him the itch. The University of Miami's jazz program — where his piano teacher had studied with Oscar Peterson and roomed with Bill Evans — gave him the vocabulary. A Harvard ethnomusicology Ph.D. gave him the framework to think about jazz as cultural history. Teaching stints at Brown, Berklee, and the New England Conservatory gave him the pedagogy. And then Asheville gave him the room to put it all together, night after night, as director of jazz studies at UNC Asheville and as a pianist whose touch carries the weight of everything he's studied and everywhere he's been.
Zack Page has been averaging 275 gigs a year since the mid-nineties. Born in Virginia, raised on his father's Duck Dunn records and his mother's old-time Appalachian singing tradition, he picked up a bass at twelve alongside his twin brother Andy's guitar and never found a reason to put it down. He's played with Billy Higgins, Delfeayo Marsalis, Eddie Daniels, and Babik Reinhardt. He's worked cruise ships and Swiss jazz festivals and LA studios. In Asheville, he holds down the low end for so many projects that listing them would take longer than the set itself. What matters is what he does in this room with these four people — which is build a floor so solid that everyone else can take risks they wouldn't dare take without him.
Evan Martin came to drums sideways, through years as a guitarist leading bands before discovering that rhythm was the instrument he was born to play. That origin story matters. He listens like a melodic player. He responds to phrases, not just patterns. You can hear it in his work with Amanda Anne Platt and The Honeycutters, in Brian Felix's organ trio, and especially here, where the conversation between five musicians moves at the speed of trust.
They've recorded together at Echo Mountain Studios. They've played these Monday nights long enough to develop the kind of shorthand that can't be rehearsed. The creature in the corner has watched them find something true hundreds of times. This is the group that lives at the center of Asheville's jazz life, and they play for free every time they walk through the door.
Featuring
From San Antonio street corners to Michael Bublé's Grammy-winning stages, Jacob Rodriguez has woven a musical tapestry that spans continents and genres. This Manhattan School of Music alumnus doesn't just play saxophone—he channels stories through reed and breath, whether he's painting midnight hues with Ambrose Akinmusire in Brooklyn's underground scene or igniting arena crowds alongside pop royalty. Now nestled in Asheville's Blue Ridge embrace, Jacob has become the valley's secret weapon,...
In a scene filled with talented musicians, Justin Ray has emerged as both a formidable trumpet voice and the kind of musical leader who makes everyone around him want to dig deeper into their craft. Leading the Justin Ray Quartet with the kind of understated authority that comes from deep listening and deeper respect for the tradition, Ray embodies the collaborative spirit that keeps Asheville's jazz scene thriving. His trumpet doesn't just play melodies—it starts conversations, poses...
From Nebraska to Harvard to Little Jumbo, Dr. Bill Bares embodies the scholarly soul of jazz—a NEH Distinguished Professor whose academic credentials from Amherst College read like a jazz education manifesto written in political science and piano poetry. When a lip injury ended his All-American trumpet dreams, Bares discovered that sometimes life's detours lead to destinations you never knew you were seeking. Now directing jazz studies at UNC Asheville after teaching stints at Harvard, Brown,...
On their twelfth Christmas, Pete Page gave one son a guitar and the other a bass. The old man loved Booker T. & the M.G.'s and worshipped Duck Dunn, and he had a theory that every good band needs a good bass man. He wasn't wrong. Andy got the guitar. Zack — four minutes younger, identical in face, opposite in instrument — got the bass. Their mother came from the McGhees of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, a family whose old-time music roots run back generations through the Appalachian soil....
In Asheville's Monday night jazz ecosystem, Evan Martin represents the rare breed of drummer who understands that sensitivity and power aren't opposites—they're dance partners. As a cornerstone of the local scene, Martin has mastered the art of musical telepathy, reading room dynamics and bandmate intentions with the precision of a master craftsman who knows exactly when to whisper and when to roar. His kit becomes a conversation partner rather than a time machine, responding to melodic...
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