JC Sanford’s EQ

JC Sanford has been recognized in the prestigious DownBeat Magazine Critic’s Poll over the past ten years, in the trombone, big band and arranger categories. While he originally built a reputation through big band writing, Sanford has forayed into many other areas, including composing for solo piano, wind and brass formations, and various mixed chamber ensembles, and often his original works defy labels such as “jazz” or “classical”. A founding member of the composers' federation Pulse (with Darcy James Argue and Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.), Sanford was a member of the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop led by Jim McNeely and Mike Abene for five years. His works have been performed by John Abercrombie, Lew Soloff, Dave Liebman, Danilo Perez, and a number of universities and high schools across the United States.

Sanford is in high demand as a conductor of new original music. He conducts the Grammy-nominated John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, the Alan Ferber Nonet with Strings, the Frank Carlberg Large Ensemble, and the Alice Coltrane Orchestra, featuring Ravi Coltrane and Jack DeJohnette. He recently was guest conductor for the North German Radio Big Band (NDR), and Quinsin Nachoff’s new “Patterns in Nature” multimedia project. He was also the curator for the "Size Matters" large ensemble series in Brooklyn for four and a half years.

JC Sanford’s EQ - DENKI (BJUR 081)

Trombonist/composer JC Sanford and his band, EQ (short for Electric Quartet) offer up a creative tour-de-force with Sanford’s eighth album as a leader, DENKI, Japanese for “electricity”, and also a tribute to his mentor, Bob Brookmeyer, who released an album titled “Electricity” in ’94 (with the WDR Big Band).

JC Sanford is an artist who is hard to pin down, as his life in music takes on many shapes and forms. He has worked with stalwarts such as Danilo Perez, Matt Wilson, John McNeil, George Schuller and many others. From producer, to conductor, to composer and bandleader, to sideman in many of NYC’s most revered ensembles (including Andrew Rathbun Large Ensemble, Nathan Parker Smith’s prog-rock big band, Andrew Green’s film noir tribute, Narrow Margin, singer-songwriter Joy Askew’s New York Brass, and Joseph C. Phillips, Jr.’s jazz/new music hybrid, Numinous), Sanford does it all with aplomb.

It would take a musician of such breadth and depth to create the music you hear on his latest and greatest, DENKI, a pastiche which can conjure up in the listener’s mind, almost simultaneously, his mentor Bob Brookmeyer, other trombone legends such as Curtis Fuller or Slide Hampton, Stevie Wonder and Black Sabbath! This is an artist who embraces inspiration when it hits, and if that means plugging in and shaking the foundation of stages and studios in the process, so be it. If that also means wearing your heart on your sleeve, so be it.

A few years back, as Covid loosened its grip on the world, Sanford began experimenting with guitar effects pedals while playing locally in Minneapolis with friends Andrea Mazzariello and Brady Lenzen. “I eventually brought my new system to a gig to experiment in a live situation, and people, especially those who had heard me play a lot before, were like, ‘You should do more of that!’ So I started to venture down the rabbit hole of effects/pedals/electronics. It was quite a revelation for me suddenly having all these new soundscapes available, but I’ve always been conscious about the results not being a gimmick, but an enhancement of my language and timbre,” explains Sanford.