Jason Palmer

Trumpeter/Composer/Educator Jason Palmer is becoming one of the most in-demand musicians of his generation. He has performed with Roy Haynes, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Smith, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ravi Coltrane, Mark Turner, Jeff Ballard, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods, Common, Roy Hargrove, Lewis Nash, and more. He has toured over thirty countries with Greg Osby, Grace Kelly, and Matana Roberts, and has been a featured guest artist on multiple projects.

Jason was a recipient of the 2014 French American Cultural Exchange Jazz Fellowship and was named a 2017 and 2011 Fellow in Music Composition by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Jason took first place in the 2009 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition, and the June 2007 issue of Downbeat Magazine cited Jason as one of the “Top 25 trumpeters of the Future.” In addition to performing on over forty albums as a sideman, Jason has recorded eight albums under his own name and is currently a Steeplechase Records recording artist, three of his recordings receiving four stars or better in Downbeat Magazine.

Jason’s quintet has been leading the house band every weekend at Boston’s historical Wally’s Jazz Café for the past fifteen years. He has presented his band at the Tanglewood Jazz Fest, Sculler’s Jazz Club, the Stone and the Jazz Gallery in NYC, the Studio in Hartford CT, as well as numerous venues throughout New England. In 2007 Jason Palmer was commissioned by the Festival of New Trumpet Music in NYC to premier a new work (based on a Sudoku game) for his quintet at the Jazz Standard. The music from that suite is featured on Jason’s 2016 record on SteepleChase entitled “Beauty ‘n’ Numbers: The Sudoku Suite.”

In addition to performing, Jason maintains a busy schedule as an educator/actor/board member at JazzBoston. He is an Assistant Professor of Ensembles and Brass at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and a visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University. He previously served on the faculty at the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, the Preparatory Division and the School for Continuing Education at the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Mission Hill grade school. Jason was the leading actor in director Damien Chazelle’s (Whiplash, LaLa Land) film “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.”