Webber/Morris Big Band will be playing music from their forthcoming September 2025 release, Unseparate, as well as premiering a new work by Angela Morris. The large ensemble is led by saxophonists/composers Anna Webber and Angela Morris. Their 2020 debut album, Both Are True, was released to critical acclaim and featured on several Best Jazz Album of 2020 lists, including New York Times’s Top 10, Bandcamp’s Top 10, and NPR’s Top 50 Jazz Albums of the Year.

Anna Webber tenor saxophone, flute, conductor
Angela Morris tenor saxophone, flute, conductor
Jay Rattman alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute
Charlotte Greve alto saxophone, flute, clarinet
Adam Schneit tenor saxophone, clarinet
Nolan Tsang, Ryan Easter, Jake Henry, Kenny Warren trumpets
Tim Vaugn, John Yao, Jen Baker, Reginald Chapman trombones
Yuhan Su vibraphone
Dustin Carlson guitar
Marta Sánchez piano
Adam Hopkins bass
Jeff Davis drums

“…a jagged-edged band that has begun to turn musicians’ heads.” —New York Times

“Riveting and mercurial…compelling explorations into the sonic possibilities of big bands.” —Downbeat Magazine “The music never swings in a conventional way. Instead, it drifts along, elements emerging then fading away again, with solos appearing like an animal emerging from the mist in the middle of a forest, gazing impassively at you, then retreating.” —Stereogum

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.

The Webber/Morris Big Band recontextualizes jazz big band with performances of adventurous new works for curious audiences. Co-leaders Anna Webber and Angela Morris compose vital, innovative repertoire that incorporates a jazz lineage with the extended techniques of modern improvisers and the compositional breadth of new music. Performances celebrate the unique current of jazz musicians in Brooklyn, as fluent in exacting notated music as a variety of improvisational languages. As a female-directed ensemble, the Webber/Morris Big Band heralds the normalization of women as bandleaders and composers and empowers girls and women in music through diverse workshops and concerts.

Anna Webber is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her new album, Shimmer Wince, explores Just Intonation in a jazz setting, and is a follow-up to her critically-acclaimed release Idiom. That album earned Webber the accolade of being named the top composer of the year by JazzTimes in 2021. Her music has been called “visionary and captivating,” (Wall Street Journal), and “heady music [that] appeals to the rest of the body” (NPR). Her album Clockwise was voted #6 Best Album of 2019 in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll, and she was recently named a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow and 2024 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts Fellow. Webber is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She has additionally been honored with the Margaret Whitton Award (administered by the Jazz Gallery); grants from the Shifting Foundation (2015), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2017), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts; and residencies from Exploring the Metropolis (2019), the MacDowell Colony (2017 & 2020), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2015), and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2014). Webber is originally from British Columbia.

If Brooklyn’s music circles draw a venn diagram, Angela Morris thrives in the loop between avant-jazz, new music, and pop. A composer and multi-instrumentalist, (known mostly as saxophonist, she grew up playing violin) she has performed throughout North America and Europe everywhere from basements to arenas. Her compositions premiered by cellist Leo Eguchi and percussionist Chris Froh, violinist Monica Davis, and the Nouveau Classical Project. She has been commissioned by WDR Big Band, Dartmouth College, and the Brooklyn Youth Music Project. Morris is a member of several active collaborative ensembles, including Skellettes, Motel, and TMT Trio. Morris has organized the multi-disciplinary, experimental concert series Brackish – music & art since 2015, which has produced dozens of concerts in Brooklyn and four online film festivals. A 2019 Composer Fellow at Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, Morris has also been artist-in-residence at Willapa Bay AiR, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Banff Centre.