Sue Orfield has been playing the saxophone for close to 40 years, with the last 10 or so right here in the Chippewa Valley. Her playing is informed by blues, joy, bluegrass, sadness, jazz, crazy, rock, and everything else she’s ever heard.

Ted Olsen is a bassist and composer from Minneapolis, MN. In 2017 he released his début album, Joyfire, on Shifting Paradigm records. His groups have been featured at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival, The Artists’ Quarter, the Black Dog Café and Icehouse. He won the 2012 Eric Stokes Song Contest held by the American Composers’ Forum and in 2015 was a finalist in the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers’ competition. Joe Strachan is an established pianist in the Twin Cities area. Joe performs with the Twin Cities Latin Jazz Orchestra, Charanga Tropical, the Pete Whitman X-tet, the Jake Baldwin Quartet, and many other groups. Also a composer and arranger, his compositions has been featured with Big Cats!, Adam Meckler Orchestra, and outstanding jazz quartet Courageous Endeavors.

Despite its moniker, byerself is much more than your typical solo project. It is an active collaboration between Minneapolis’ finest musicians, artists, dancers, and videographers.

The project started in 2013, when Greg Byers started performing solo shows using only his voice, electric cello, and laptop. After the launch of a self-titled EP, byerself was put on hold when Greg started a new job as bassist with an internationally touring jazz/blues band. Greg used this opportunity to springboard his music career, resulting in many notable performances and recording sessions. Yet, he found himself pining for a meaningful outlet for his creativity; a way for his music to positively impact the community of musicians, artists, and patrons that had grown around him.

Emboldened, Greg repurposed byerself to best address these musical goals. In its current iteration, Greg teams up with jazz piano virtuoso Javier Santiago and percussion savant Arthur “LA” Buckner to defy the norms of your typical jazz trio. Untethered by tradition, byerself uses its platform to make bold artistic statements that capture and respond to the sociopolitical and environmental issues defining our era.

Since forming in 2012 Chicago’s Twin Talk has steadily drifted from the conventions of the saxophone trio. While reedist Dustin Laurenzi, bassist-singer Katie Ernst, and drummer Andrew Green are deeply rooted in jazz tradition, they’ve spent their time on the band stage together making their music more elastic, spontaneous, and open, embracing new inspirations without stifling the improvisational heart of their work. All three musicians are active members in the city’s bustling jazz community, each playing in numerous working bands, but they’ve found a true collective voice as Twin Talk. They’ve used live performances as opportunities to stretch—expanding on composed material and ditching set lists in favor of calling tunes on the fly—but on their upcoming album Weaver they’ve pushed themselves further than ever, using the recording studio as a place for experimentation, letting a new batch of compositions develop and take new shapes. As critic Howard Reich wrote recently in the Chicago Tribune, “These musicians listen keenly to one another, and with a sensitivity that only comes from familiarity and trust.”