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.
Featuring
From the church pews of Orangeburg to the concert stages of Japan, Will Boyd carries the sacred fire of soul saxophone in his lungs and heart. This South Carolina State University alumnus didn't just study the tradition of Eddie Harris and Hank Crawford—he absorbed their DNA, then filtered it through his own musical genome to create something both reverent and revolutionary. Now splitting his time between the classrooms of UNC Asheville and Warren Wilson College, Will serves as both professor and prophet, teaching young musicians that technique without soul is just expensive noise. His EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) doesn't replace his acoustic arsenal—it amplifies his voice across dimensions, while his wife Kelle Jolly's vocals provide the perfect harmonic counterpoint to his reed-driven narratives. Winner of the MLK Arts Award and inductee into South Carolina State's jazz hall of fame, Will transforms every stage into a sanctuary where the secular meets the spiritual, and the ancient language of the blues speaks directly to tomorrow's possibilities.
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, Berklee, and the New England Conservatory, he transforms every performance into a master class where bebop meets book learning, where chord changes become cultural commentary. His scholarly articles in American Music and Jazz Research Journal prove that the deepest musical truths emerge when academic rigor meets artistic passion, making every Little Jumbo appearance a reminder that jazz isn't just entertainment—it's American intellectual history told in real time through eighty-eight keys.
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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 merely walk—it tells stories with every step, each note choice revealing decades of deep listening to masters like Ray Brown and Ron Carter while forging his own path through the modern jazz landscape. This is bass playing as conversation rather than accompaniment, where Sternberg's melodic sensibilities transform traditional rhythm section roles into something more akin to chamber music, proving that the most profound musical statements often come from the spaces between the obvious beats, where subtlety meets groove and creates something that makes everyone else in the room sound better.
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 will notice." By fourteen, Brown was already a working musician, and by the time he reached adulthood, he'd appeared on recordings with Ravi Coltrane, Wallace Roney, Kenny Garrett, and Roy Hargrove—the kind of résumé that makes other drummers question their life choices. His debut album *3 Down* channels the roaring energy of Art Blakey, the polyrhythmic complexity of Elvin Jones, and the compositional sophistication that comes from growing up in a house where dinner table conversation probably involved discussions of harmonic substitutions and rhythmic displacement. Now based in Knoxville, Brown splits his time between education, composition, and leading projects that blur the lines between jazz, funk, R&B, blues, and rock—because when you've performed with David "Fathead" Newman, Curtis Fuller, Steve Nelson, Warren Wolf, and Greg Tardy, genre distinctions start feeling like arbitrary suggestions rather than rules. His drumming doesn't just keep time—it tells stories, builds architecture, and occasionally reminds everyone in the room that being a working musician at fourteen wasn't just precociousness, it was preparation for a lifetime of making every bandstand feel like a conversation between past masters and future possibilities.
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 talented musicians whose albums *Theme For A Celebration* and *Brassterpiece Theatre* (both recorded at Echo Mountain) have earned WNCW radio acclaim and festival circuit credibility. His horn has graced stages at Red Rocks (with Shpongle Live Band and Papadosio), shared bills with Umphrey's McGee, and contributed to a sound that seamlessly blends brass-band tradition with rock energy and jam-band sensibilities. When Bradley's not laying down horn arrangements with Empire Strikes Brass, he brings his "soulful trumpet sounds" to Electro Lust—an Electronic Latin Funk project featuring Grammy-winning artists and members of Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band and The Fritz, where live beats meet brass and multicultural influences collide in ways that make you forget whether you're in Miami, Brazil, or Cuba. This is trumpet playing that understands groove isn't just about rhythm—it's about creating spaces where melody becomes movement, where horn lines become conversations, and where every performance proves that Asheville's music scene thrives because players like Bradley know how to honor tradition while pushing it somewhere new.
Admission
FREE!