Little Jumbo's creative music series functions as a cultural incubator—providing space for the genesis of new musical ideas. Every Monday and Tuesday, we showcase world-class musicians performing original, boundary-pushing work—completely free, no cover charge. This isn't background music; it's music in its purest form: live, unfiltered, and pushing the genre forward in real time. As an incubator, we create space where musicians explore new sonic territories and audiences encounter ideas they've never heard before. Democratizing access to exceptional art is who we are—it's the same philosophy behind everything we do.
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-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
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.
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.
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 showcasing two decades of friendship, strong working rapport, and mutual respect between these five-time Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalists, composers, and producers.
Now these musical globetrotters bring their light-and-dark conversation to Asheville, anchored by two of the Blue Ridge's finest rhythm architects. Quinn Sternberg doesn't just play bass—he becomes the gravitational center around which musical solar systems orbit, his four strings serving as the invisible force that holds melody and rhythm in perfect harmonic balance, building rhythmic foundations so sturdy that horn players can stretch toward the stratosphere. Ryan Ptasnik brings his jazz-trained versatility from Wyoming high school bands to Central Asian opera houses to Asheville's vibrant scene, proving that the best drummers create the adaptable foundation that allows wildly diverse musical visions to flourish.
After Chris spent three months immersed in Rio's music culture, he brought Justin back for a week of tracking sessions where different configurations of musicians shifted the music's feel and groove—lending fire and spontaneity that now comes to life with Sternberg and Ptasnik as the rhythmic heart. Expect an evening where Asheville's own Chris Bullock (that's right—he started his musical obsession right here with Beach Boys and hip-hop cassettes) teams with Tennessee's Justin Stanton to prove that the most compelling musical conversations happen when saxophone meets trumpet, keyboards meet synthesis, light meets dark, and two of Asheville's most intuitive rhythm players make it all swing.
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-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
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, Texas, studied with Ray Brown (because if you're going to learn bass, you might as well learn from God), and then spent the better part of four decades becoming the kind of first-call player that legends call when they need someone who actually listens. This is bass playing as musical archaeology—every choice informed by decades of conversation with masters, every line both honoring tradition and pushing it forward.
For this quintet, LaSpina assembles some serious mountain firepower: Dr. Tim Fischer bringing USC-trained precision and genre-blurring audacity on guitar, Jacob Rodriguez channeling world-traveling saxophone wisdom from San Antonio street corners to Michael Bublé's Grammy stages, Alan Hall on drums (a four-decade veteran who's bent time behind Lee Konitz and Cirque Du Soleil), and Dr. Bill Bares on piano—Harvard's former NEH Distinguished Professor who turned a lip injury that ended his trumpet career into a keyboard calling that's reshaped jazz education across New England and now UNC Asheville.
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 horizons all February long.
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 teaching halls where young minds learned to bend time to stages where time learned to bend itself. Another brings the gravitational architecture of four strings, building invisible foundations sturdy enough to let everyone else float. A third treats the violin like an open-ended hypothesis, proving that the most interesting discoveries happen when classical training meets a willingness to sound beautifully wrong. And the fourth channels bebop through the lens of political science, his eighty-eight keys reminding us that jazz has always been intellectual discourse disguised as groove.
This isn't a band playing repertoire—it's an ensemble treating the stage like a petri dish where grooves breathe, textures mutate, and curiosity compounds into something that couldn't exist in any single musical tradition. European improvisation meets Appalachian immediacy. Scholarly rigor meets street-level spontaneity. Cirque Du Soleil's theatrical surrealism brushes against Harvard's ivory tower sensibilities, all of it refracted through the prism of musicians who've learned that convention is just another variable to manipulate.
In a room where proximity breeds revelation and every frequency finds its frequency-responder, prepare for an evening where rhythm becomes hypothesis, melody becomes evidence, and four veteran explorers prove that after four decades of making music, the most exciting sound is still the one you haven't heard yet.
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-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
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-composed musical themes, groove-based soul explorations, traditional jazz-influenced pieces, Americana-inspired peaceful melodicism, world music influences, free jazz adventures, and occasional forays into cacophonous noise music. Through years of improvisational study, they've learned to access that rarefied space where genres dissolve into pure creative energy.
In this musical laboratory, Sanders' guitar becomes a conduit for universal vibration, Boyd's reeds channel the breath of consciousness itself, Page's bass provides the fundamental frequency of existence, while Hall's percussion creates the rhythmic heartbeat of the cosmos.
