In ancient cosmology, the Empyrean was the highest heaven—a realm of pure fire and light where celestial beings dwelled beyond the planetary spheres, untouched by earthly corruption or temporal decay. It's the perfect name for three musicians who long ago abandoned ground-level groove for something that operates in the stratosphere of sonic exploration.
This isn't fusion. Fusion implies things that were separate. This is music that never acknowledged the boundaries in the first place—music from the highest heaven, where all sounds exist simultaneously in a state of pure potential, waiting for the right combination of strings, sticks, and celestial alignment to make them audible to earthbound listeners.
Jay Sanders doesn't just play music—he uses it as a star map, plotting courses through harmonic nebulae that haven't been discovered by conventional jazz cartographers. His conversations with entities from the music of the spheres aren't metaphorical. He's been there. He's mapped the territory. He knows which chord voicings open wormholes and which melodic contours can bend spacetime just enough to make listeners forget which dimension they're occupying.
Zack Page doesn't walk—he levitates, transcending physical properties, becoming a conduit for gravitational forces that hold entire musical solar systems in orbit. He carries dual citizenship in heavy metal's molten core and jazz's outer atmosphere, forging sonic highways that connect the subterranean to the celestial, the doom riff to the bebop line, all while making it sound inevitable.
Alan Hall propulsion systems—not for traveling through space, but for creating space itself. He doesn't just keep time; he manufactures it, stretches it, compresses it, and occasionally makes it disappear entirely. Every idea is a small supernova, recalibrating local physics. He's the timekeeper for music that exists outside time.
Together, they create what one observer called "a canvas of like-minded sonic adventurers"—but that undersells it. This is architecture in four dimensions. This is what happens when three virtuosos decide that the atmospheric constraints of conventional jazz trio playing are just suggestions that can be ignored by anyone with sufficient escape velocity.
THE SECOND SET ANOMALY: GRAVITATIONAL ASSIST FROM RETURNING COSMONAUTS
Midway through the evening, the trio's orbital trajectory will be altered by the arrival of two musicians who've been traveling their own elliptical paths through the cosmos:
Jason Krekel—the polymorphous string alchemist who's spent decades proving that different acoustic voices are really just different tuning systems for the same cosmic frequency.
Andy Pond—the philosopher who has spent years learning that seemingly opposite musical traditions weren't opposing forces but complementary wavelengths in the same universal vibration.
When these five trajectories converge in Little Jumbo's gravitational well, expect original compositions that oscillate between through-composed themes, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and whatever else manifests when accomplished musicians stop asking "what genre is this?" and start asking "what does the Empyrean sound like tonight?"
First Set: The Empyrean Trio in its natural three-body orbit
Second Set: Quintet configuration achieving critical mass
Witness the moment when Mount Olympus meets the music of the spheres, when cosmic jazz meets Appalachian alchemy, when three becomes five and Little Jumbo becomes a launching pad for sounds that were never meant to be contained by atmosphere, architecture, or anyone's preconceived notions of what a Tuesday night should sound like.
Launch sequence begins at 7. No spacesuits required, but recommended for full immersion.
Featuring
For over four decades, Alan Hall has been the heartbeat behind some of the most adventurous music on three continents, transforming drum sets into portals between the earthbound and the ethereal. From intimate European clubs with alto saxophone legend Lee Konitz to the surreal theatrical landscapes of Cirque Du Soleil and Teatro Zinzanni, Hall doesn't just keep time—he bends it, stretches it, and occasionally makes it disappear entirely. His sticks have danced behind Paul McCandless's haunting oboe meditations and Art Lande's keyboard explorations, while his seven-year tenure at Berklee College of Music shaped countless young musicians who now carry his rhythmic DNA across the globe. This isn't just a drummer who's logged tens of thousands of miles touring Europe, the USA, and Canada—this is a percussion philosopher who understands that every snare crack and cymbal wash is a conversation between tradition and revolution, between what jazz was and what it could become. His two published drum books and magazine articles serve as love letters to an instrument that, in Hall's hands, becomes less of a timekeeper and more of a time traveler.
Some musicians chase the notes—Zack Page lets them chase him, which might explain how he's managed to average 275 gigs per year since the mid-1990s, turning bass lines into highways that stretch from Virginia backroads to Swiss jazz festivals to Asheville's intimate listening rooms. This rhythm section nomad carries dual citizenship in the worlds of heavy metal and jazz, a musical passport stamped by legendary drummer Billy Higgins and acclaimed clarinetist Eddie Daniels, earned through decades of wandering between Los Angeles studios, New York City sessions, and now the Blue Ridge Mountains. His four strings have held down the low end on cruise ship stages and gypsy jazz jams with equal authority, whether he's anchoring 'One Leg Up' in Asheville's Django-influenced underground or laying foundation stones for folk rock storytellers. From electric bass at eleven to acoustic mastery in college, Page embodies the restless spirit of American music itself—always moving, always grooving, always making everyone around him better. As fellow trumpeter Justin Ray observed, that's the hallmark of truly great musicians: they don't just play their part, they elevate everyone else's.
In the sonic laboratory of Asheville's Blue Ridge Mountains, Jay Sanders conducts experiments where Sonny Sharrock's raw electricity meets John Hartford's pastoral wisdom, where Bill Frisell's ambient textures dance with Dave Holland's rhythmic architecture. This guitarist-composer-alchemist doesn't just write music—he constructs musical universes from the ground up, whether he's crafting intimate chamber pieces or preparing symphonic statements for the Blue Ridge Orchestra. His 2024 solo debut 'Evanescent' reads like a love letter to impermanence itself, featuring seven original compositions plus a tone poem dedicated to the Voyager spacecraft, performed by an eight-person ensemble that German critics praised for its 'astonishing range of styles and sounds.' From organizing Asheville's inaugural Improvisational Music Festival to serving on URSA Asheville's board, Sanders embodies the community-building spirit that transforms mountain towns into musical meccas. His upcoming 'Sinfonietta Helene,' premiering with the Blue Ridge Orchestra in September 2025, represents not just a personal artistic milestone, but the moment when decades of cross-genre exploration crystallize into symphonic form—proving that the most profound musical innovations happen when you're brave enough to let jazz, rock, blues, metal, and African influences speak the same language.
Jason Krekel attended Jimmy Buffett concerts as a baby—strapped to his father Tim's back while dad played lead guitar—absorbing the songwriter, studio, and publishing scene of Nashville before he could even speak. When his father handed him a guitar at 14 with zero pressure attached, young Krekel took lessons with future collaborator Jay Sanders, played their first gig together in 11th grade, then headed to Boone for college where he dove headfirst into bluegrass, old-time, and whatever else had strings attached. Three decades later, this multi-instrumentalist has built an Asheville empire of sound that defies categorization: hot jazz revivalist with the Firecracker Jazz Band (playing Bonnaroo and keeping 1920s dance floors packed), surf rock tornado with The Krektones, punk ukulele provocateur in Mad Tea Party/Krekel and Whoa, bluegrass explorer with Snake Oil Medicine Show, and collaborator with everyone from Seattle guitar legend Baby Gramps to Trombone Shorty. His philosophy on why vintage jazz still slaps? "People had to make their entertainment. They couldn't just push a button and get a Spotify playlist." Krekel doesn't just play music—he designs album covers through his Hand-Cranked Letterpress, appeared on David Letterman, recorded comedy songs for LaZoom tours, and somehow made the 2004 BlueBrass Project (Asheville roots meeting New Orleans brass) make perfect sense. His latest venture, Bam-A-Lam (launched 2023), proves his point: "Everything I've done in my musical life has informed how I play now." From banjo to guitar, from Jazz Age parlors to garage rock chaos, from Nashville birthright to Asheville chosen-home, Krekel proves that the most interesting careers spiral outward like vinyl grooves—each rotation revealing new collaborations, new sounds, new reasons to make people care about music made with actual hands.
When Andy Pond enrolled at Appalachian State University in Boone, his brother George and George's then-wife Caroline joined him to form Snake Oil Medicine Show, coining the term "slamgrass" for their colorful and kinetic update on old-time string music—soon inflecting it with deep pockets of jam-inspired groove, shades of rockabilly smoothness, and most famously, comfortable reggae rhythms. It was, as Caroline puts it, "the perfect thing for us to do, to move to North Carolina, to be in the roots of Appalachian music and learn from old time music and bluegrass music." Nineteen years into Snake Oil's career, the band has become something of an Asheville institution—frequenting every music festival and venue these mountains offer, representing an intersection of world music and traditional Southern sound that's become synonymous with the city's sonic hallmarks. Their experiences traveling to Jamaica to learn reggae music and incorporating bluegrass with reggae created "such an amazing sound" that North Carolina—Boone and Asheville—proved the perfect place to experiment, mixing genres with abandon. Beyond Snake Oil, Andy became a founding force in AVAS (The Acoustic Vibration Appreciation Society) alongside Jay Sanders, Jason Krekel, and others—a progressive acoustic group that released their self-titled debut in 2000, blending newgrass with influences ranging from Bill Frisell and Mahavishnu Orchestra to Scandinavian folk legends. These days, this teacher and musician focuses on "fostering creative learning environments, promoting World Peace through Music and Art, and attending to forgiveness and acceptance." From Boone student to Asheville institution, from slamgrass inventor to world peace advocate, Andy Pond proves that the best banjo players don't just pick strings—they pick philosophies, picking their way through genres and geographies until they find the sound that makes reggae and bluegrass not just coexist, but groove together like they were always meant to.
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