Matt Smiley Trio

Join us for a special night featuring the Matt Smiley Trio (Peter Sommer - sax, Dru Heller - drums). This trio has been making music together for ten years and has developed a repertoire of jazz standards in the style of the chordless trios of Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson. This expressive and versatile trio will perform a variety of jazz standards from the Great American songbook, bebop, and modern jazz compositions.

Bassist, composer, and educator Matt Smiley navigates his broad sonic world with imagination, openness, and artistic vision. Smiley merges his deep roots in the jazz bass tradition with modern explorations of sound, texture, and improvisation from the world of contemporary composition, making him a favorite and frequent collaborator of creative musicians across a variety of musical genres.

Improvisation and collaboration are the common threads across Matt’s recorded albums as a bandleader. His recent album Binnen Buiten features his mentor David Pope on tenor saxophone, and drummers Dru Heller and Ron Coulter, playing open form improvisation and jazz standard forms. 

Matt earned a doctorate of music at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has toured nationally and internationally, appearing on stages, festival performances, and university residencies in the United States, Costa Rica, and the Netherlands. He has performed with bandleaders and composers including David Murray, Terrell Stafford, Christian Wolff, Greg Osby, Vinny Golia, Tony Malaby, Walter Thompson, Sam Newsome, and many more.

TICKETS Set One: 6:30 - 7:45 pm |  Set Two: 8:30 - 9:45 pm