Past Events

Justin Ray has played Madison Square Garden and the Sydney Opera House, and on Monday he walks into Little Jumbo, where the art doesn't quite make sense and something in the corner is always watching. What changes is the instrument behind him. A piano leaves silence between its notes and a trumpet floats there. A Hammond B3 never stops breathing, and the horn has to push through a living harmonic field, has to earn its place in the room. Brian Felix came to the organ through the piano, studied with Kenny Barron at Rutgers, co-led a jazz-rock group that toured nationally for years, earned a doctorate exploring the moment rock becomes jazz, and landed at UNC Asheville, where that question continues to get answered through drawbars and a rotating Leslie.

Every atom in your body was forged in the belly of a dying star. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the carbon threading through every strand of your DNA — all of it cooked at temperatures beyond human language, scattered across the void, and reassembled over billions of years into something that walks into a bar on a Tuesday night and listens. Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall are four collections of stellar debris who have chosen to spend their brief window of consciousness making original music together. Not playing songs. Not running repertoire. Building something in real time from the raw material of attention, instinct, and decades of accumulated craft. Sanders' guitar refracts melody through a prism of everything from Sharrock to Hartford.

There is a specific gravity to a room when someone who has played with Stan Getz and Chet Baker and Jim Hall and Benny Carter picks up a bass in the corner of a cocktail bar. Not reverence, exactly — something more like tidal pull. **Steve LaSpina** has spent four decades as one of New York's most quietly essential bassists, a musician whose note choices carry the compressed weight of every stage he's stood on since leaving the dance band tradition of Wichita Falls, Texas, for the South Side ...

Casey Driessen: Sunday Bazaar at Little Jumbo is a monthly residency on the 3rd Sunday where music spills out like treasures in a bustling market. Fiddle loops, wild grooves, sonic oddities, and vibrant rhythms mix together in a swirl of color and sound. Tease your tastebuds with expertly crafted cocktails and soak in the cozy, electric atmosphere. No two nights are alike—wander in, follow your ears, and see what you discover.

Forget dinner reservations and overpriced roses. This Valentine's Day, DJ Lil Meow Meow takes over Little Jumbo to spin the kind of beats that make strangers dance together and couples fall in love all over again. Whether you're celebrating with your sweetheart, your best friends, or your beautifully independent self, come shake it off and let the music do the talking. No wilting flowers, no awkward small talk over prix fixe menus—just good drinks, great company, and a dance floor that doesn'...

When a percussion philosopher assembles his laboratory of sound, the walls between rhythm and melody begin to dissolve. This is music as inquiry rather than statement—four sonic investigators treating Little Jumbo's intimate geometry as a place where questions sound better than answers. One arrives carrying four decades of conversations between drum heads and the spaces between continents, his sticks having traced rhythmic philosophies from Cologne jazz clubs to circus tent reveries, from ...

The Brian Felix Organ Trio is the jazz/funk organ group of the future. Rooted in the deep traditions of organ-driven jazz, funk, and soul, the trio blends reggae, samba, surf rock, gospel, and ambient soundscapes into a unified and forward-looking musical vision. Known for its telepathic interplay, deep grooves, and daring spontaneity, the trio has been captivating audiences throughout the southeastern United States. The group’s most recent release, Level Up (Slimtrim Records, 2025), a collec...

On Thursday, January 29th, Little Jumbo sheds its winter coat and slips into something a little more... tropical. The Tropilachia Club returns, transforming our cozy corner of Asheville into a sun-soaked escape where palm fronds sway against the frost outside and every sip carries a whisper of warmer days ahead. It's still the Little Jumbo you know and love—just wearing a lei and dreaming of spring. Join us as we trade snow for sand (metaphorically speaking) and raise a glass to brighter hori...

*"We don't say what we mean. We play what we imply. And we've been inverting the natural order since... right about now."* ~ Zack Page (Probably) In the chrome-plated lounges of tomorrow's yesterday, where neon hums at 440Hz and the cocktails pour themselves, four sonic cosmonauts have breached the atmospheric ceiling of conventional groove. **KEITH DAVIS** mans the control panel of 88 ivory switches, routing harmonic frequencies through dimensions yet unnamed. His fingers decode the me...

When a bassist who's held down the low end for Stan Getz, Jim Hall, Chet Baker, and Mel Lewis walks into a room, the entire history of jazz walks in with him. Steve LaSpina doesn't just play upright bass—he channels four decades of New York City's most hallowed bandstands into every note, every walking line a direct connection between Little Jumbo's Monday night intimacy and the countless legendary sessions that came before. LaSpina grew up marinating in dance band DNA in Wichita Falls, Te...

Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall distill the pure essence of improvisational expression, converging as alchemists of sound, transmuting musical elements into their most essential forms. This quartet embodies the philosophical concept of quintessence—the fifth element beyond earth, air, fire, and water—representing the fundamental substance from which all musical reality springs. Their original compositions crystallize the essential qualities of diverse influences, oscillating between through-com...

When Snarky Puppy bandmates Chris Bullock and Justin Stanton—who've spent countless hours together since meeting in Texas in 2005—decided to bring their unique songwriting visions to Rio de Janeiro in 2023, they discovered something magical: Justin's compositions tended toward lighter sounds and feelings, while Chris's carried darker, sometimes sinister hues. The result became "Claro e Escuro" (Portuguese for "light and dark"), an album that celebrates the vibrancy of Brazilian culture while ...

Casey Driessen: Sunday Bazaar at Little Jumbo is a monthly residency on the 3rd Sunday where music spills out like treasures in a bustling market. Fiddle loops, wild grooves, sonic oddities, and vibrant rhythms mix together in a swirl of color and sound. Tease your tastebuds with expertly crafted cocktails and soak in the cozy, electric atmosphere. No two nights are alike—wander in, follow your ears, and see what you discover.

We've locked the doors, dimmed the lights, and handed the cocktails to those who usually hand them to you. Our team is currently being appreciated with the same care they pour into every drink—which is to say, excessively. Back tomorrow with renewed gratitude and possibly matching hangovers.

Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall distill the pure essence of improvisational expression, converging as alchemists of sound, transmuting musical elements into their most essential forms. This quartet embodies the philosophical concept of quintessence—the fifth element beyond earth, air, fire, and water—representing the fundamental substance from which all musical reality springs. Their original compositions crystallize the essential qualities of diverse influences, oscillating between through-com...

**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 sa...

Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall distill the pure essence of improvisational expression, converging as alchemists of sound, transmuting musical elements into their most essential forms. This quartet embodies the philosophical concept of quintessence—the fifth element beyond earth, air, fire, and water—representing the fundamental substance from which all musical reality springs. Their original compositions crystallize the essential qualities of diverse influences, oscillating between through-com...

The Core represents everything essential about Asheville's jazz DNA distilled into five musicians who understand that the best ensembles aren't just collections of individual talents—they're alchemical reactions where individual voices merge into something greater than their sum. This quintet embodies the mountain city's unique musical ecosystem, where Blue Ridge authenticity meets sophisticated harmonic exploration, where the intimacy of local venues allows for the kind of musical risk-takin...

**The Soul Jazz Revival rings in 2026** Velvet curtains between dimensions. Four sonic alchemists stirring champagne bubbles into galaxies. When the clock chases midnight and the year dissolves into pure possibility, there's only one question that matters: where will you be when the groove takes over? This is the moment when midnight stops being a deadline and becomes a threshold. When the rhythms don't just move you—they rewrite your molecular structure. Soul jazz as time travel, as proph...

Picture four monsters sharing a tub of Jiffy Pop over an open flame—that dangerous, beautiful moment when you're not sure if you're about to get perfectly popped kernels or a kitchen fire, but you're committed to finding out together. That's what happens when these four get in a room: controlled chaos, collaborative combustion, and the kind of musical conversation that happens when everyone's holding the pan handle at once. The beauty of monster jazz is nobody's trying to be polite. There'...

When Brian Felix sits behind a Hammond B3, something curious happens: the ghost of Jimmy Smith nods approvingly while Jimmy McGriff's ghost mutters "yeah, but can he fix the Leslie when it breaks?" Felix spent his formative years studying piano with Kenny Barron at Rutgers—which is a bit like learning carpentry from a master craftsman and then deciding to become a plumber. Different instrument, same devotion to the craft, equally likely to involve fixing things that leak. After cutting his...

Two nights before Christmas, while most people are panic-wrapping presents and pretending their family dynamics are healthy, the Danny Iannucci Quartet will be at Little Jumbo doing something far more therapeutic: playing jazz. This is your chance to escape the tinsel tyranny, the forced cheerfulness, the annual reminder that your uncle has terrible political opinions, and the slow realization that you bought the wrong size sweater for everyone on your list. Danny Iannucci anchors on bass ...