Past Events
LITTLE JUMBO CREATIVE MUSIC SERIES
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.
Tuesday
January
27
2026
The Zack Page Euphemism
*"We don't say what we mean. We play what we imply. And we've been inverting the natural order since... right about now."* ~ Zack Page (Probably)
In the chrome-plated lounges of tomorrow's yesterday, where neon hums at 440Hz and the cocktails pour themselves, four sonic cosmonauts have breached the atmospheric ceiling of conventional groove.
**KEITH DAVIS** mans the control panel of 88 ivory switches, routing harmonic frequencies through dimensions yet unnamed. His fingers decode the me...
Monday
January
26
2026
The Steve LaSpina Quintet
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, Te...
Tuesday
January
20
2026
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall
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-com...
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Alan Hall - Drums
- Jay Sanders - Guitar and Effects
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
January
19
2026
Chris Bullock + Justin Stanton Quartet
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 ...
- Chris Bullock - Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet
- Justin Stanton - Trumpet, Keyboards
- Quinn Sternberg - Bass
- Ryan Ptasnik - Drums
Admission:
FREE!
Sunday
January
18
2026
Casey Driessen: Sunday Bazaar
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.
Admission:
FREE!
Wednesday
January
14
2026
CLOSED: Staff Appreciation Party
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.
Tuesday
January
13
2026
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall
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-com...
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Alan Hall - Drums
- Jay Sanders - Guitar and Effects
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
January
12
2026
The Will Boyd Project
**The Will Boyd Project** isn't just a band—it's a spiritual reckoning delivered through reeds and rhythm, a sonic revival where the sacred traditions of the Black church collide with the revolutionary fire of jazz. Led by multi-instrumentalist and "mad sax man" Will Boyd, this ensemble transforms every performance into a joyful noise that honors the soul sax prophets—Eddie Harris, Hank Crawford, King Curtis—while pushing the movement forward with urgent, right-now energy.
From baritone sa...
- Alex Bradley - Trumpet
- Quinn Sternberg - Bass
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Bill Bares - Piano
- Kenneth Brown - Drums
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
January
6
2026
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall
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-com...
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Alan Hall - Drums
- Jay Sanders - Guitar and Effects
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
January
5
2026
The CORE
The Core represents everything essential about Asheville's jazz DNA distilled into five musicians who understand that the best ensembles aren't just collections of individual talents—they're alchemical reactions where individual voices merge into something greater than their sum. This quintet embodies the mountain city's unique musical ecosystem, where Blue Ridge authenticity meets sophisticated harmonic exploration, where the intimacy of local venues allows for the kind of musical risk-takin...
- Evan Martin - Drums
- Justin Ray - Trumpet
- Bill Bares - Piano
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Jacob Rodriguez - Saxophone
Admission:
FREE!
Wednesday
December
31
2025
New Year's Eve at Little Jumbo with the Soul Jazz Revival
**The Soul Jazz Revival rings in 2026**
Velvet curtains between dimensions. Four sonic alchemists stirring champagne bubbles into galaxies. When the clock chases midnight and the year dissolves into pure possibility, there's only one question that matters: where will you be when the groove takes over? This is the moment when midnight stops being a deadline and becomes a threshold. When the rhythms don't just move you—they rewrite your molecular structure. Soul jazz as time travel, as proph...
- Quinn Sternberg - Bass
- Joe Enright - Drums
- Andy Page - Guitar
- Alex Taub - Piano
- Jacob Rodriguez - Saxophone
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
December
30
2025
Jay Sanders' Mindtonic featuring Will Boyd, Ben Bjorlie, and Vic Stafford
Picture four monsters sharing a tub of Jiffy Pop over an open flame—that dangerous, beautiful moment when you're not sure if you're about to get perfectly popped kernels or a kitchen fire, but you're committed to finding out together. That's what happens when these four get in a room: controlled chaos, collaborative combustion, and the kind of musical conversation that happens when everyone's holding the pan handle at once.
The beauty of monster jazz is nobody's trying to be polite. There'...
- Ben Bjorlie - Drums / Bass
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Vic Stafford - Drums
- Jay Sanders - Guitar and Effects
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
December
29
2025
Brian Felix Organ Quartet Featuring Justin Ray
When Brian Felix sits behind a Hammond B3, something curious happens: the ghost of Jimmy Smith nods approvingly while Jimmy McGriff's ghost mutters "yeah, but can he fix the Leslie when it breaks?" Felix spent his formative years studying piano with Kenny Barron at Rutgers—which is a bit like learning carpentry from a master craftsman and then deciding to become a plumber. Different instrument, same devotion to the craft, equally likely to involve fixing things that leak.
After cutting his...
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
December
23
2025
Danny Iannucci Quartet
Two nights before Christmas, while most people are panic-wrapping presents and pretending their family dynamics are healthy, the Danny Iannucci Quartet will be at Little Jumbo doing something far more therapeutic: playing jazz. This is your chance to escape the tinsel tyranny, the forced cheerfulness, the annual reminder that your uncle has terrible political opinions, and the slow realization that you bought the wrong size sweater for everyone on your list.
Danny Iannucci anchors on bass ...
Admission:
FREE
Monday
December
22
2025
Alan Hall's Exploritoreum
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 ...
Admission:
FREE!
Sunday
December
21
2025
Casey Driessen: Sunday Bazaar
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.
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
December
16
2025
Jay Sanders' Empyrean Trio featuring Zack Page & Alan Hall with Special Guest Isaac McMurry on the 2nd Set
The Empyrean Trio ascends to the highest sphere of musical expression, where Sanders, Page, and Hall commune in the celestial realm of pure improvisation. Like ancient philosophers who believed the empyrean was the highest heaven—a place of fire and light beyond the physical world—this trio inhabits the ethereal space where earthbound genres dissolve into transcendent musical dialogue.
Their original compositions float between the terrestrial and the sublime, oscillating from groove-laden ...
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
December
15
2025
The CORE
The Core represents everything essential about Asheville's jazz DNA distilled into five musicians who understand that the best ensembles aren't just collections of individual talents—they're alchemical reactions where individual voices merge into something greater than their sum. This quintet embodies the mountain city's unique musical ecosystem, where Blue Ridge authenticity meets sophisticated harmonic exploration, where the intimacy of local venues allows for the kind of musical risk-takin...
- Evan Martin - Drums
- Justin Ray - Trumpet
- Bill Bares - Piano
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Jacob Rodriguez - Saxophone
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
December
9
2025
Jay Sanders' Empyrean Trio featuring Zack Page & Alan Hall
The Empyrean Trio ascends to the highest sphere of musical expression, where Sanders, Page, and Hall commune in the celestial realm of pure improvisation. Like ancient philosophers who believed the empyrean was the highest heaven—a place of fire and light beyond the physical world—this trio inhabits the ethereal space where earthbound genres dissolve into transcendent musical dialogue.
Their original compositions float between the terrestrial and the sublime, oscillating from groove-laden ...
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
December
8
2025
Rodriguez, Bullock, Sternberg & Sergel
When four musical travelers converge at Little Jumbo Bar, expect the conversation to wander through territories unmarked on any genre map. One brings a baritone voice seasoned by continents and street corners, another weaves bass lines that function more as gravitational fields than rhythm, a third treats the drum kit like a philosopher treats questions—with equal parts conviction and curiosity—and the fourth arrives carrying the collected wisdom of Asheville church music, Brooklyn beat labs,...
- Chris Bullock - Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet
- Quinn Sternberg - Bass
- Al Sergel - Drums
- Jacob Rodriguez - Saxophone
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
December
2
2025
THE AVAS CONTINUUM: A TRANS-DIMENSIONAL REUNION OF DISPLACED TEMPORAL MUSICIANS
*[or: "What Happens When a High School Club Achieves Sentience and Summons Its Members Across Space-Time"]*
In the year 2000, a progressive acoustic group called AVAS released one album on Little King Records and vanished into the multiverse. Now, twenty-five years later, the quantum entanglement that bound these musicians has reached critical mass, creating a temporal anomaly that threatens to collapse the space-time continuum unless they reconvene and complete the sonic ritual they began...
- Jason Krekel - Fiddle, Guitar
- Andy Pond - Banjo
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Gaines Post - Flute, Words
- Alan Hall - Drums
- Jay Sanders - Guitar and Effects
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
December
1
2025
UNCA XTET
The UNCA XTet under the direction of Jacob Rodriguez
**Rylan Dunn** - Saxophone
**Juca Camera** - Piano
**Jack Kilbride** - Guitar
**Ethan Matthews** - Bass
**Cami Caudle** - Drums
Forget everything you think you know about student ensembles. The UNCA XTET isn't a jazz band—it's a sonic petri dish, a living organism that expands and contracts like a musical amoeba, adding saxophones when the composition demands fire, subtracting guitars when space becomes the statement, morp...
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
November
25
2025
The Will Boyd Project
**The Will Boyd Project** isn't just a band—it's a spiritual reckoning delivered through reeds and rhythm, a sonic revival where the sacred traditions of the Black church collide with the revolutionary fire of jazz. Led by multi-instrumentalist and "mad sax man" Will Boyd, this ensemble transforms every performance into a joyful noise that honors the soul sax prophets—Eddie Harris, Hank Crawford, King Curtis—while pushing the movement forward with urgent, right-now energy.
From baritone sa...
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Taylor Pierson - Keyboards
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Micah Thomas - Drums
Admission:
FREE!
Monday
November
24
2025
Chris Bullock + Justin Stanton Quartet
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 ...
- Chris Bullock - Saxophone, Flute, Clarinet
- Justin Stanton - Trumpet, Keyboards
- Quinn Sternberg - Bass
- Ryan Ptasnik - Drums
Admission:
FREE!
Tuesday
November
18
2025
Sanders, Boyd, Page & Hall
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-com...
- Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI
- Zack Page - Acoustic & Electric Bass
- Alan Hall - Drums
- Jay Sanders - Guitar and Effects
Admission:
FREE!
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