Joel Frahm
Biography Joel Frahm
Joel Frahm
After more than three decades as a regular on the New York City club circuit and three years in the Nashville music scene, award-winning saxophonist Joel Frahm has joined the music faculty at Texas State University. He has appeared alongside noted jazz artists such as Brad Mehldau, Bill Charlap and Matt Wilson and has recorded with Dianne Schuur, Freddy Cole, Jane Monheit and others. He has performed at night clubs, music clinics, and jazz festivals around the world. Fans know him for his big tenor sound - fluid, inventive and full of passion.
Joel Frahm is known in the jazz world as an icon of the tenor saxophone. An unsurpassed emotional projection always characterizes his playing which draws on the breadth the American musical tradition. Star pianist Brad Mehldau, his childhood friend, praises his ability of ‘getting to the heart of the song, immediately, from the first note.’ Joel’s trio follows in the footsteps of the legendary sax trios of Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson and Steve Grossman: an open-hearted, virtuosic style, given a fresh twist by Joel Frahm and co.
Currently living in music city Nashville, Joel Frahm has honed his craft in the jazz clubs of New York for more than thirty years. He has collaborated with, among others, Betty Carter, Kenny Barron en Freddy Cole. He made the duo album Don’t Explain with Brad Mehldau. On our stage he has previously appeared in the bands of Omer Avital. His current trio with bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Ernesto Cervini was founded in Toronto. This fall will see the release of their new album, the follow-up to the widely acclaimed The Bright Side.
