Ben Colvin

Some saxophonists arrive on a bandstand announcing themselves. Ben Colvin is the other kind. A fixture of the Asheville scene for years, he has built a playing identity on something quieter and more durable: taste, a beautiful tone, and an instinct for where the tune actually wants to go. Ask any rhythm section in town who they'd call first for a horn chair and his name comes up early.

The Ben Colvin Quartet is his working band, a unit built around the deep pocket of Joe Enright on drums, Quinn Sternberg on bass, and Alex Taub at the keys. Their book moves fluently between '60s Blue Note soul jazz — Wayne Shorter, Hank Mobley, that whole sanctified corner of the catalog — and more contemporary voices like Roy Hargrove and Ben Wendel, with originals threaded through and Afro-Cuban and funk pulses keeping the rhythm section honest. It is jazz played the way it was meant to be played: listening first, conversation second, solos as a natural consequence of both.

Ben also holds the saxophone chair in Queen Bee and the Honeylovers, the Asheville swing outfit that has won the Mountain Xpress Best of Jazz vote every year since 2019, and turns up across the city's broader ecosystem of gigs, sessions, and one-night collaborations. He is the kind of player you hear once and then start noticing everywhere, which is how most good saxophonists seem to happen.

This performance is part of Little Jumbo's curated music series and is free to attend.