Peter Evans

trumpet | United States

Peter Evans is a composer, trumpet player, improvisor and bandleader based in New York City since 2003. Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation, and his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Peter is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music.
He leads and composes for several different ensembles, primarily Being & Becoming and SYMPHONY (with Alice Teyssier, Jozwiak and Levy Lorenzo). He leads the improvisational trio Forever 21 with virtuosi Andy Berman (guitar) and Michael Ode (drums). As well as collaborative projects such as his duo with Elias Stemeseder and Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl), Evans continues to work in a variety of new formations, exploring through-composed music, group improvisation, arranging, and electronic music.
In addition to touring and presenting his groups internationally since 2007, Evans has been exploring solo trumpet music since 2002 and is widely recognized as a leading voice in the field.
As a composer, Evans has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation. In 2022 Evans was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition.
As an educator, Evans has given masterclasses and conducted workshops on improvisation, composition, instrumental practice, and creativity.
Evans has worked with some of the leading figures in contemporary music: John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Brian Ferneyhough, Kanye West, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Mary Halvorson, Craig Taborn, Ambrose Akinmusere, Lydia Lunch, Weasel Walter, George Benjamin, Dave Liebman, Ingrid Laubrock, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Tyshawn Sorey, Ikue Mori, Steve Schick, and others. As an interpreter of notated concert music, Evans has performed works by Varese, Xenakis, J. S. Bach, Stravinsky, Elliott Carter, Marcos Balter, Julio Estrada, Agusta Read Thomas, Wagner, Ligeti, and many more.
Peter Evans has been releasing recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011.

Being & Becoming was formed in 2017 by composer and trumpet player Peter Evans. The name of the band, drawn from the writing of Sufi writer and musician Inyat Khan, reflects the group's commitment to the challenge of spontaneous creativity. Evans' compositions for the band draw from a wide variety of sources, traditional and experimental, with a grounding in improvisational idioms, notated concert music and an array of experimental approaches.
The band features some of the most virtuosic and forward-thinking young musicians in Jazz and Contemporary music today; vibraphonist Joel Ross (Blue Note recording artist, worked with Immanuel Wilkins, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Marquis Hill) bassist Nick Jozwiak (Ravi Coltrane, Aaron Burnett) and drummer Michael Ode (Theo Croker, Wallace Roney, Gary Bartz). Each of these players are trailblazing artists in their own right, and with Evans’ trumpet and ornate yet organic compositions they achieve a true band sound. Influences for the music range from the work of masters like McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane, traditional musics of Africa and India, 20th Century European modernism and the improvised idioms pioneered by the AACM, the SME and many more. The result is something that feels somehow both new and old at once, an experimentalism grounded in both rigor and a passion for the undiscovered.
Being & Becoming's debut album was released to wide acclaim in 2020 on More is More records in both vinyl and digital formats. Their followup release will be available in the Spring of 2023.

Peter Evans (trumpet), Nick Jozwiak (bass), Michael Ode (drums), Joel Ross (vibraphone)

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Peter Evans has toured regularly throughout North America, Europe, South America, Australia and Asia since 2006 and has performed at many of the leading contemporary music and jazz festivals. His solo concerts, set beyond conventional genres, have been performed everywhere from DIY noise and rock venues in New York City, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Kanye West's 2015 Adidas Fashion Show, to the Newport Jazz Festival and crumbling cathedrals in Europe.His concerts have been described in the New York Times as "...an enigmatic ritual of physical exertion and formal control" as well as "...breathtaking and often unsettling...". All About Jazz wrote of his 2009 solo album Nature/Culture, "Evans piles timbres and textures on top of each other in dizzying profusion until any relationship to the traditional musical universe disappears, leaving the listener adrift in a sonic world governed by its own internal logic."

Peter Evans (trumpet)

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