Bio
Erik Jekabson is a freelance composer, arranger, trumpet player and educator who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is equally busy composing, arranging and playing for different bands, leading his own groups, teaching a wide variety of students and running the Young Musicians Program at the Jazzschool in Berkeley.
As an arranger and composer, he’s arranged for symphony orchestras, (the San Francisco Symphony, the BBC Radio Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra Project) vocalists, (Madeleine Peyroux, Ani DiFranco, Jane Krakowski, Jackie Ryan, Kenny Washington, Madeline Eastman) jazz ensembles, (The Daggerboard- Erik Jekabson Orchestra, the Erik Jekabson String-tet, and his own Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which holds a monthly residency at the Jazzschool in Berkeley) and co-composed the score for the documentary film "Exiled"
As a trumpet player, he’s spent time on the road with John Mayer, Galactic and Illinois Jacquet, and has performed and recorded with other notable musicians such as Taj Mahal, Maceo Parker, Boz Skaggs and Kermit Ruffins. He has released eight albums under his own name (including four on his own record label, Jekab’s Music), and produced four records with the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra.
Born in Berkeley March 23, 1973, Jekabson belongs to a formidable lineage of Berkeley High trumpeters that runs from Steven Bernstein through Jonathan Finlayson and Ambrose Akinmusire. As a member of the class of 1991, he absorbed a huge swath of the jazz continuum, starting with his early love of “Ellington and Basie and all the Blue note stuff with Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham, and Freddie Hubbard,” he says.
After graduating from Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1994, he moved to New Orleans, where he co-directed the New World Funk Ensemble, played and toured with Galactic, and led small combos at iconic jazz spots like Snug Harbor. He also established an international presence, touring in France with the great French organist Eddy Louiss. By 1998 he’d relocated to Brooklyn, where he continued to gain a diverse array of musical experience. He performed with the Illinois Jacquet Big Band, and co-led the quintet Vista with saxophonist Dan Pratt, which released 1999’s potent hard-bop session The Arrival. Outside of jazz he toured and recorded with singer/songwriter Howard Fishman, played in the Off-Broadway show The Jazz Singer and spent a year on the road with pop singer John Mayer. He also released his debut recording, 2002’s Intersection (Fresh Sound/New Talent), a session featuring guitarist Ben Monder, saxophonists John Ellis and Matt Otto, bassist Alexis Cuadrado, and drummer Mark Ferber.
Returning to the Bay Area in 2003 to pursue a Master's Degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Jekabson quickly made a name for himself as a versatile and dedicated player with a big, warm sound and an aversion to clichés. “I got pretty into classical music at SFCM and had a chance to hang in that world,” he says. “That was pretty inspiring. I didn’t really learn how to write classical forms. My teacher was Elinor Armer and she encouraged me to do whatever I felt like. I leaned into that, that I’m a jazz composer using classical instruments, deeply rooted in my love of Ellington, Gil Evans and my love of different textures.”
Since graduating he’s divided his time between the bandstand and the classroom, serving on faculty at colleges around the Bay Area, but he’s best known as an inveterately inspired bandleader and composer who regularly works with Grammy-nominated masters like vocalist Kenny Washington and percussionist John Santos. He displayed his deep affinity for New Orleans rhythms on 2010’s Crescent Boulevard with special guests Santos and tenor saxophonist Dayna Stephens, and followed up with 2012’s startlingly beautiful Anti-Mass, a sextet session featurng Stephens and violinist Mads Tolling (a project supported by a grant from the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music and a commission from the de Young Museum and Intersection for the Arts).
His latest album, Breakthrough represents his highly productive, ongoing relationship with Wide Hive Records, a label owned and run by composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Gregory Howe. In addition to Erik's four solo albums, (Erik Jekabson Quintet, Erik Jekabson Sextet, One Note at a Time and Breakthrough) they’ve collaborated on series of albums, sometimes writing together and sometimes designing an album’s overall sonic concept. Wide Hive’s Daggerboard sessions feature veteran masters like Headhunters drum legend Mike Clark, bassist Henry “The Skipper” Franklin, and multi-instrumentalist Roger Glenn. The label’s Throttle Elevator Music series features tenor sax star Kamasi Washington.