The Will Boyd Project isn't just a band—it's a spiritual reckoning delivered through reeds and rhythm, a sonic revival where the sacred traditions of the Black church collide with the revolutionary fire of jazz. Led by multi-instrumentalist and "mad sax man" Will Boyd, this ensemble transforms every performance into a joyful noise that honors the soul sax prophets—Eddie Harris, Hank Crawford, King Curtis—while pushing the movement forward with urgent, right-now energy.
From baritone sax sermons to bass clarinet benedictions, Boyd channels decades of soul tradition through every note, reimagining spirituals, hymns, and freedom songs with albums like Freedom Soul Jazz and Soulful Noise. This is music that's toured Japan, shared stages with Fred Wesley and Jeff Coffin, and graced PBS documentaries—yet still feels as intimate as a Sunday morning service in a Memphis sanctuary.
For this Monday night service, Boyd assembles a congregation of mountain heavyweights: Dr. Bill Bares bringing scholarly soul and Harvard-trained piano poetry, Quinn Sternberg providing gravitational bass lines that anchor every conversation, Knoxville's Kenneth Brown on drums—the son of jazz visionary Donald Brown who channels Art Blakey's roaring energy—and Alex Bradley adding soulful trumpet sounds honed through years with Empire Strikes Brass and Electro Lust, where New Orleans second-line swagger meets Asheville eclecticism.
This is bebop meeting the church pew, virtuosity serving something bigger than technique, and every song becoming a freedom song. Expect an evening where brass testifies alongside reeds, where rhythm section and horns create sacred spaces, and where the future sounds like liberation.
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Quinn Sternberg doesn't just play bass—he becomes the gravitational center around which musical solar systems orbit, his four strings serving as the invisible force that holds melody and rhythm in perfect harmonic balance. In Asheville's intimate jazz venues, Sternberg has mastered the art of musical architecture, building rhythmic foundations so sturdy that horn players can stretch toward the stratosphere while drummers explore the outer reaches of syncopation. His upright bass doesn't...
The house in Orangeburg, South Carolina, was a frequency spectrum unto itself. The Isley Brothers and the Manhattan Transfer and Dolly Parton and Mozart — all of it moving through the same rooms, all of it landing in the ears of a kid from Queens, New York, who had been transplanted to the Lowcountry and was trying to figure out which signal to lock onto. His mother had graduated from Jamaica High School of the Performing Arts, and she made sure Will and his siblings sang. Gospel was the...
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,...
Alex Bradley's trumpet delivers "soulful sounds" that bridge New Orleans second-line swagger with Asheville's mountain-town eclecticism, proving that the best brass players don't just play notes—they tell stories with every phrase, every articulation, every moment the bell points skyward.
As a core member of Empire Strikes Brass since the band's 2012 formation, Bradley has helped transform what started as a group of friends playing New Orleans-inspired funk into a collective of seriously...
When you grow up in a household where your father is jazz visionary pianist Donald Brown and your brother Keith is also a pianist, you have two choices: find a different career or claim the one instrument nobody else in the family is playing. Kenneth Brown chose drums at age four, then spent the next few years studying piano "to gain a harmonic foundation"—which is Brown family code for "if you're going to be a drummer, you better understand what everyone else is doing harmonically or Dad...
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