Jonah Parzen-Johnson is a baritone saxophonist based in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up on

Chicago's South Side The South Side is an area of Chicago, Illinois, U.S. It lies south of the city's Loop area in the downtown. Geographically, it is the largest of the three sides of the city that radiate from downtown, with the other two being the north and we ...

. He completed a Bachelor of Music in jazz studies at New York University in 2010, and a Master of Music in jazz saxophone at Manhattan School of Music in 2012. In Chicago, Parzen-Johnson studied under

Mwata Bowden Mwata Bowden (born October 11, 1947 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States) is an American jazz reeds player associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and an instructor in improvisational Jazz at the University of C ...

, a member of the

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1965 in Chicago by pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall, and composer Phil Cohran. The AACM is devot ...

. Jonah Parzen-Johnson performs regularly as a solo saxophonist and his music for solo

baritone saxophone The baritone saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass. It is the lowest-pitched saxophone in common use - the bass, contra ...

and

analog synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...

, balances simple melodic passages with extended techniques including

circular breathing Circular breathing is a technique used by players of some wind instruments to produce a continuous tone without interruption. It is accomplished by breathing through the nose while simultaneously pushing air through the mouth using air stored ...

multiphonics A multiphonic is an extended technique on a monophonic musical instrument (one that generally produces only one note at a time) in which several notes are produced at once. This includes wind, reed, and brass instruments, as well as the human voice ...

, and

overtones An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. (An overtone may or may not be a harmonic) In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental i ...

. Parzen-Johnson's solo music explores his interest in

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...

and

avant-jazz Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz and experimental jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Orig ...

. Since 2013, Parzen-Johnson has performed with an analog

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

built around a

Moog Synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

VCO, and

Dave Smith Instruments Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer; it became a market leader and industry standard, used ...

Mopho Module. His self-assembled synthesizer is built to follow the volume of his saxophone and a set of pedals he plays with his feet. In June 2015, Parzen-Johnson released his second solo album featuring saxophone & his custom synthesizer, and spent two months touring 34 US cities in support of the record. In an exercise to connect with people, and create empathy in all of the cities he visited, Parzen-Johnson collected three reasons to live in each city, and in November 2015 he released them as a paperback book called ''Three Reasons to Live Here''.

Discography

As A Leader * ''Imagine Giving Up'' (We Jazz Records, 2020) * ''Helsinki 8.12.18'' (We Jazz Records, 2019) * ''I Try To Remember Where I Come From'' (

Clean Feed Records Clean Feed Records is a jazz record label founded in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2001. The label's roster includes Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Carlos Bica, Anthony Braxton, Mark Dresser, Ellery Eskelin, Peter Evans, Scott Fields, Fight the Big Bull, ...

, 2017) * ''Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow'' (Primary Records, 2015) * ''Look Like You're Not Looking'' - 7" (Primary Records, 2013) * ''Michiana'' (Primary Records, 2012) As A Co-Leader *Berke Can Özcan and Jonah Parzen-Johnson ''Friendship Music For Turkey'' (2023) * Zongo Junction ''No Discount'' (Electric Cowbell Records, 2014) * Zongo Junction ''The Van That Got Away'' (Primary Records, 2012) * Zongo Junction ''Thieves!'' (2009) *Reed's Bass Drum ''Which is Which'' (2009)

Bibliography

* ''Three Reasons To Live Here, Volume 1'' (2015)

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Musicians from Chicago American male saxophonists 21st-century American saxophonists 21st-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians {{jazz-saxophonist-stub