Michael Eaton

Michael Eaton (b. 1981) is a Brooklyn, NY based saxophonist, composer, and educator. As a saxophonist and improvising artist, his professional career to date has spanned a variety of idioms, especially modern jazz and free improvised music. He embraces a progressive and holistic vision of jazz, cognizant of its rich history and development, but reaches for a personal outlook with an eye towards future possibilities.

Michael's releases include his 2014 debut album on Destiny Records, Individuation, which highlighted angular themes, intricate minimalistic vamps, freebop, Cageian prepared piano, and multilayered open platforms. The band is joined on several cuts by NEA Jazz Master and saxophonist David Liebman. Scott Yanow (All Music Guide, Downbeat) calls Individuation a "rather impressive debut, the start of what will surely be a very significant solo career", and Vitto Lo Conte writes in Music Zoom that it signifies "a great debut album of a saxophonist and a quartet who seem to have all it takes to get noticed in the world of contemporary jazz".

Individuation's second album, Dialogical, was released on Destiny in 2019. Centered around the theme of dialogical thinking and multiplicity, it features compositions and improvisations with a large cast of musicians: Jon Crowley (trumpet), Brittany Anjou (vibraphone, Origin Records), Cheryl Pyle (flute), Sean Sonderegger (tenor sax; Skirl Records), James Brandon Lewis (tenor sax), Enrique Haneine, and a very special guest artist, Lionel Loueke (guitar and vocals; Blue Note Records).

Michael frequently collaborates with bassist/multi-instrumentalist Adam Minkoff (Doyle Bramhall II, Amy Helm) in a plethora of idioms, often at Rockwood Music Hall on New York's City's Lower East Side.

In May 2013, Minkoff celebrated the 100th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring by transcribing, arranging, and performing a rock octet edition of the piece. Following an electrifying, standing room only Rockwood Music Hall show, the ensemble went into Bunker Studio in November 2014 to record the Rite and a vocal suite by Stravinsky, for which Michael played alto saxophone and flute. The album, "Til the End My Dear: Arrangements of Stravinsky" was released in April 2018.

Eaton and Minkoff also engage in curation and presentation of special concert presentations. On June 8, 2015, they commemorated John Coltrane's iconic 1965 free jazz album, Ascension, with "Michael Eaton and Adam Minkoff Present John Coltrane's Ascension" at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn. Featuring a stellar cast of NYC improvisers, the concert received coverage by the New York TImes's Nate Chinen, as well as the Village Voice's Jim Macnie, who cited it as one of the top nine concerts to see that week in New York City. The ensemble's personnel included saxophonists Michael Attias, Daniel Carter, Sean Sondergger, James Brandon Lewis, and Briggan Krauss; trumpeters Dan Brantigan, Jonathan Finlayson, and Graham Haynes; guitarist Ava Mendoza; pianist Anthony Coleman; and drummers Nick Anderson and Calvin Weston. On December 1, 2017, Eaton and Minkoff celebrated Coltrane again, this time for the 50th anniversary of two 1967 free jazz classics: Interstellar Space and Stellar Regions. Over the course of two sold out sets at Williamsburg's National Sawdust, they performed Coltrane's late music with a super powered band of David Liebman, Marc Ribot, Jamie Saft, Nick Anderson, and Anthony Cole.

Michael plays soprano saxophone in flutist Cheryl Pyle's Beyond Group, a chamber group with flutist Pyle, guitarist Bern Nix, and percussionist Newman Taylor Baker. Composer/conductor Carman Moore frequently conducts their improvisations, and occasionally the group is augmented with various members: pianist Roberta Piket, bassoonist Claire de Brunner, bassist Hilliard Greene, flutist Gene Coleman, baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, alto saxophonist Daniel Carter, and soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome.

Eaton has also started Tenor Triage, a three tenor cooperative band that enlists tenorists Sean Sonderegger and James Brandon Lewis. Their eponymous debut, Tenor Triage, was released on Ropeadope in 2019. The group is a rambunctious and free wheeling update on the "three tenors" format, combining groove with free jazz.

Michael's teachers include Eugene Rousseau, Tom Walsh, David Baker, and David Liebman, with additional private studies with James Moody, Ned Goold, Ellery Eskelin, Steve Coleman, Tony Malaby, Randy Peterson, Doug Webb, and Gary Foster. He was a 2018 attendee of the SIM (School for Improvised Music) seminars in Brooklyn. He has appeared in concert or as a side artist with David Baker, David Liebman, Ingrid Jensen, Fred Hersch's Leaves of Grass, Jim Snidero, Eugene Chadbourne, Jimmy Carl Black, Ned Rothenberg, Jamie Saft, Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman, G Calvin Weston (Prime Time, the Lounge Lizards), Cheryl Pyle, Bern Nix, Newman Taylor Baker, Daniel Carter, Michael Attias, Jonathan Finlayson, Claire Daly, Jamie Baum, Anthony Cole (of Sam Rivers Trio), Doyle Bramhall II, Tim Hagans, Jon Cowherd, Frank LoCrasto, Cory Smythe, Stephan Crump, Judi Silvano, Phil Markowitz, Roberta Piket, Tony Marino, Matt Darriau, Jessica Lurie, Frank London, Akie Bermiss, The Temptations, and Sylvia McNair. Show less