Will Mason Ensemble

The Will Mason Ensemble is a genre-defying group of some of the brightest young jazz and classical musicians in New York City today. The group performs the music of drummer/composer Will Mason, a doctoral candidate in music at Columbia University. Their debut album Beams of the Huge Night was named Album of the Year by Avant Music News, and Mason was voted one of the top five newcomer musicians of 2015 in the El Intruso International Critics Poll.

Mason's music is baroquely detailed at times, at other times spare; sometimes menacing, sometimes meditative. It's otherworldly music of immense complexity that nevertheless sounds seamless and coherent. Mason's sonic palette is informed as much by jazz avant- garde pioneers like Albert Ayler and Eric Dolphy as by contemporary concert music composers like Georg Friedrich Haas and György Ligeti. Color and texture are privileged, and lithe and sinuous grooves come into focus only to recede quickly back into the murk.

Members of the Will Mason Ensemble also perform with Henry Threadgill, Arturo O’Farrill, Rudy Royston, Ensemble ACJW, International Contemporary Ensemble, and many others. The Will Mason Ensemble is actively performing in New York City and around the country, and their music was featured by the Mannes College - The New School jazz ensemble in a series of workshops and performances. The ensemble members are also active and in-demand teachers, and hold advanced degrees from Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music, and Columbia University.