GRAMMY-nominated brass quartet The Westerlies celebrate the release of their latest album, Have You Heard? The Music of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1. A longtime friend and mentor of the ensemble, Bill has granted The Westerlies exclusive access to a large body of new, never-before-heard compositions from his recent notebooks. Have You Heard? premieres 11 of these works, rendered through The Westerlies’s singular brass lens.
In the words of the composer himself: “I was excited by the prospect of The Westerlies playing some of my music. I didn’t tell them anything. No instructions. Just handed over my little sketches. They knew what to do. Surprise me. I am thrilled with the result. They understood and stayed true to what was on the page, went deeper, developed it, took it somewhere without losing sight of where it was coming from in the first place. Imagination. They turned a line or a drawing into a painting.”
Riley Mulherkar trumpet
Chloe Rowlands trumpet
Andy Clausen trombone
Addison Maye-Saxon trombone
“Sublime, precise and deeply spiritual” – DownBeat Magazine, Frank Alkyer
“For the brass quartet The Westerlies, “beyond category” rings true thanks to their unique blend of jazz, classical, new improvised music, chamber music and Americana.” – Jazz Times, Lee Mergner
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
The Westerlies, “an arty quartet…mixing ideas from jazz, new classical, and Appalachian folk” (The New York Times), hold a singular space in modern music. From Carnegie Hall to Coachella, the GRAMMY-nominated quartet has upended presumptions of the brass tradition to create music that is “folk-like and composerly, lovely and intellectually rigorous” (NPR Music).
Comprising Riley Mulherkar and Chloe Rowlands on trumpet and Andy Clausen and Addison Maye-Saxon on trombone, the ensemble has relentlessly composed, arranged, adapted, recorded, and toured over the past fifteen years with the precision of a string quartet, the audacity of a rock band, and the charm of a family sing-along.
Across ten critically acclaimed albums, The Westerlies have earned “a unique reputation for exploring the emotional textures of American music” (DownBeat), championing living composers and collaborators including Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Conrad Tao, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, and Robin Holcomb.
2025 saw the release of two major recordings: Paradise, The Westerlies’ “sublime, precise, and deeply spiritual” (DownBeat) reimagination of the Shape Note choral tradition, which earned the group a GRAMMY nomination; and Songbook, Vol. 3, a live EP and concert film celebrating friends and recent collaborators including Fleet Foxes, Adrianne Lenker, Samora Pinderhughes, Anaïs Mitchell, Aoife O’Donovan, Joanna Newsom, and more.
The Westerlies’ singular sound and virtuosic skill have also made them in-demand collaborators, playing in studio and live alongside artists from Common to Haley Heynderickx, and on GRAMMY-nominated releases from both Fleet Foxes and Aoife O’Donovan.
2026 will see The Westerlies embark on a major retrospective of American music pioneer Bill Frisell, featuring newly composed works and arrangements; an adaptation of Maria Schneider’s GRAMMY-winning classical song cycle Winter Morning Walks, featuring South African vocalist Vuyo Sotashe; and a new collaboration with Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, exploring the music of Judee Sill.
