The Steve LaSpina New Music Ensemble
Performing live in the corner at Little Jumbo, 241 Broadway, Five Points, Asheville. No cover. Pull up a seat.
Admission no cover · ever
For more than four decades Steve LaSpina has been the ground other musicians stood on. His bass held the floor for Jim Hall, Stan Getz, Benny Carter, and Phil Woods, the kind of company that quietly turns a sideman into an institution. The word "new" in this ensemble's name is, then, a small act of insistence. LaSpina is also a composer, with classical leanings and some seventy-five original tunes to his name, and here he steps out from beneath everyone else's music to put his own in the center of the room. His tone is warm and dark and unhurried, the sound of a player with nothing left to prove and a great deal he still wants to say.
The music finds its strangeness in the company he keeps. Tim Fischer plays guitar like a man who studied bebop in one room and built synthesizers in the next, drawing lines that might have been composed at a desk or coaxed out of the hum of a patch cable. Ryan Ptasnik sits behind the drums carrying a stranger map than most: his playing has traveled from band rooms in rural Wyoming to an opera house in Kazakhstan, and some of that distance stays in his time. Around LaSpina's compositions the three open a space where eras and electricities meet without arguing, where an upright bass built in the 1850s and a voltage-controlled oscillator turn out to want the same thing.
This is the precise reason Little Jumbo keeps a curated series running through the quiet middle of the week, free of charge and asking no occasion: so an elder's new writing can be turned over by two restless players in a small room while anyone at all looks on. The pieces are recent, the readings alive to the moment, the night open to whoever decides to walk in. Even the creature in the corner seems to settle in for this one, the way you do when the people in front of you plainly have all the time in the world.
Born in the dance band DNA of Wichita Falls, Texas, Steve LaSpina transformed family musical heritage into a New York City bass legacy that spans four decades and reads like a who's who of jazz history. From Chicago's South Side clubs to Manhattan's most prestigious stages, LaSpina's upright and electric bass have provided the rhythmic backbone for legends including Stan Getz, Jim Hall, Mel Lewis, and Chet Baker. This is bass playing as musical archaeology, where every walking line connects present moments to past masters, where each note choice reflects decades of studying with giants like Ray Brown while forging his own path through the modern jazz landscape. LaSpina doesn't just play bass—he translates the entire history of American music into four-string conversations, proving that the best rhythm section players aren't just timekeepers, they're time travelers who can make any room feel like it's connected to every jazz club that ever mattered.
Dr. Tim Fischer exists in that rarified space where USC doctoral precision meets street-level groove, where European touring experience fuses with American jazz DNA to create something entirely his own. This guitarist-composer-educator doesn't just play jazz fusion—he reimagines what happens when classical technique meets electronic experimentation, when rock energy collides with bebop sophistication. From Los Angeles studios to St. Louis classrooms to his current faculty position at Coastal Carolina University, Fischer has built a career on proving that the most interesting music happens at the intersection of seemingly incompatible styles. His collaboration with Brian Felix on 'Level Up' and his co-authorship of 'Jazz Guitar Duets' demonstrate a musician who understands that teaching and performing aren't separate activities—they're two sides of the same creative coin, each informing the other in an endless cycle of musical discovery.
Ryan Ptasnik honed his drumming skills in Pinedale High School band classes in Wyoming, a foundation that would eventually carry him from garage bands to performing at the Opera and Ballet Theatre in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. This jazz-trained drummer has become a versatile force in multiple musical worlds, from his work with the experimental group Moyindau—where he performed Kazakh poetry settings at the base of Pik Lenin in southern Kyrgyzstan on a stage constructed from two pickup trucks—to anchoring the Asheville-based Grateful Dead tribute band Clouds of Delusion.
Ptasnik's musical journey includes traveling to Central Asia with pianist Alex Kreger, where they presented music in Tajikistan with Norwegian saxophonist Mette Henriette, and recording with Moyindau—a group that blended jazz with arrangements of popular and folk tunes from Macedonia and Tajikistan. Now based in Asheville, he maintains an active presence supporting local artists like Whitney Monge and Rick Cooper at venues like Highland Brewing, while also serving as the rhythmic backbone for Batdorf & The Brother Wolf.
From Wyoming band rooms to makeshift mountain stages in Kyrgyzstan to Asheville's vibrant music scene, Ptasnik proves that the best drummers don't just keep time—they become the adaptable foundation that allows wildly diverse musical visions to flourish, whether channeling Jerry Garcia's spirit or bringing Kazakh poetry to life through rhythm.