credit Camille Lenain, camillelenain.com

Skrontch Music ensemble members include a diverse cross section of New Orleans' creative music scene, drawing from the traditional, straight-ahead, and free improvisation communities, including:
Doug Garrison - drums
James Singleton - bass
Steve Glenn - sousaphone
Oscar Rossignoli - piano
Emily Fredrickson - trombone
Shaye Cohn - cornet
Reagan Mitchell - reeds
Aurora Nealand - reeds
Ricardo Pascal - reeds
Peter J Bowling - electronics

Byron Asher’s Skrontch Music performs original music exploring the history of jazz in New Orleans and investigating its relationship to lineages of Black radicalism. Through ongoing archival research, contemporary composition, and collective improvisation, the music looks backwards to see forward, reminding listeners of where the music has come from and suggesting where it might go.

NEW ALBUM OUT NOW.

For all booking and inquiries, email: byron.asher@gmail.com

Press:

“Asher is an ideal example of the heart and ambition of New Orleans’ creative music community.” - We Jazz Magazine

Praise for Skrontch Music Lord, when you send the rain (2024):

“Delivers a thoughtful and moving suite of music, stirring thoughts about what the blues really mean in 2024.” - We Jazz Magazine

“Makes for a resounding and passionate narrative, the latest act in a very human story. 4 stars (of 5)” - All About Jazz

Praise for Byron Asher’s Skrontch Music (2019):

“Skrontch Music effects a deft integration between past and future. As a musical accomplishment, the recording's impressive, but its incorporation of historical background makes it resonate all the more meaningfully.” -– textura.org review of Skrontch Music

"A kaleidoscopic montage of action-packed artistry." -- Mike Greenblatt review of Skrontch Music in The Aquarian

“I don't claim to know every bit of music that is out there in the universe being made, but it's been a long time since I've heard a new jazz work by a relatively new artist that draws me back for repeated listens.” — Mark Smotroff, Audiophile review of Skrontch Music

"One of the top 20 jazz albums of 2019." -- textura.org

credit Noé Cugny, noecugny.org

Past Performances:

University of Mississippi, Center for the Study of the South, Oxford, MS
Rudy’s Jazz Room, Nashville, TN
AND Gallery, Jackson, MS
Church of the Sacred Ear, Grand Coteau, LA
Jazz Now concert series, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation
Snug Harbor, New Orleans
Shape of Jazz to Come, Sound Observatory New Orleans
The Broadside, New Orleans
Marigny Opera House, New Orleans
A Studio In The Woods Forestival, New Orleans
New Orleans Jazz Museum
Xavier University, New Orleans

More about the project:

Skrontch Music borrows its name from a lesser-known swing era dance step, the Skrontch, which Duke Ellington featured in his show at the Cotton Club in the late 1930s. The lyrics to Ellington's 1938 recording of Skrontch instruct: "Skrontch on the four beat / Skrontch then you repeat / Skrontch up on your toes / And then start to cover ground." The emphasis on beat four propelled a dancer into the next measure of music, and like the dance, the music pauses in the here and now, looks back from where we came, and steps forward.

Lord, when you send the rain, the second in a series of recordings by the group, was released to the public on April 19, 2024 on New Orleans’ Sinking City Records. The album is a meditation on the blues, looking to the history of that music tradition as a Black radical socio-political cultural production rooted in the Mississippi Delta with central ties to the formation of jazz in New Orleans.

The composition of the work was supported by a 2018 MacDowell Fellowship, and the recording was funded by grants from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Threadhead Cultural Foundation.

The group’s debut recording, Byron Asher’s Skrontch Music, was released in 2019 also on Sinking City. The album was researched and composed during a 2016/17 artist residency at New Orleans’ A Studio In The Woods and incorporates elements of sound collage and text from primary source documents to address the intertwined lineages of the formation of New Orleans jazz and anti-Jim Crow activism. The recording was supported by grants from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Puffin Foundation.

In March 2020, Skrontch Music embarked on its first tour, playing shows across the Deep South, including at the Center for the Study of the South at the University of Mississippi. The tour was funded by an inaugural Jazz Road touring grant from South Arts, and the trip through the Delta was especially meaningful as they dug into the material featured on the second recording.