Mark Turner

The Ohio-born, Los Angeles-raised Turner is one of the most admired saxophonists of his generation, renowned for his exploratory intellect and intimate expressivity on the full range of the tenor horn. For ECM, the New York-based musician released his sixth album as a leader, Lathe of Heaven, in 2014. The quartet for Lathe of Heaven included trumpeter Avishai Cohen, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Marcus Gilmore, with The Guardian describing the band appreciatively as “sounding like Birth of the Cool floated over a 21st-century rhythmic concept.” That album followed two for the label in the cooperative trio Fly with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard (Sky & Country and Year of the Snake), along with appearances on key ECM recordings by Billy Hart (All of Our Reasons and One Is the Other) and Enrico Rava (New York Days). About Turner, National Public Radio has said: “He has an innovative sonic signature, a certain floating chromaticism, rhythmic mindfulness and lightness of tone, filled with subtleties. Basically, his music has personality, which keeps the best musicians ringing his phone, and the aspiring ones listening hard.”