Ned Rothenberg

Ned Rothenberg (saxophone, clarinet, shakuhachi flute)

“Rothenberg pushes sonic and spatial barriers… as he explores combinations of vacillating intervals and knotty melodic kernels, and balances evolving patterns with ripe arpeggios and colorful harmonics.” – Fred Bouchard, DownBeat

“Rothenberg reconciles an unapologetically cerebral approach with accessibility and emotional expression. No mean feat, indeed.” – Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader

Hailed as “America’s most intimate composer and improviser” (All Music Guide), multi-instrumentalist Ned Rothenberg has evolved a singular and deeply personal language on an array of woodwinds – primarily alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and shakuhachi flute – over the course of four and a half decades of investigatory musicianship. On Looms & Legends, his first solo recording since 2012’s clarinet-focused World of Odd Harmonics (Tzadik), Rothenberg once again reveals himself to be a captivating storyteller and an unparalleled sonic architect.

To be released on September 5, 2025 via Pyroclastic Records, Looms & Legends hints in its title at the fundamental elements that make Rothenberg’s unaccompanied excursions so compelling: its deft, multi-hued weaving and the spellbinding eloquence of its unfolding narratives. “I think of those elements as the X and Y axes of my approach,” Rothenberg explains. “In my improvisations, there are the more melodic pieces that have a definite sense of starting at a certain place and taking you along a storyline. Then there are the ‘loom’ pieces which present the listener a rich and atypical aural environment in which to weave their own subjective narrative.”

Rothenberg’s travels have taken him across five continents, he has studied deeply the diverse traditions of African and Asian music, and has communicated his discoveries to students through his Global Perspectives course at The New School. He has so imbibed this never-ending research that it resists the lure of pastiche, instead emerging as something uniquely his own, an embrace of the idea of “future primitivism.”

As he explains, “I like to imagine my music as the indigenous sounds of a country that hasn’t been discovered yet. I love the idea that there’s some weird culture out there whose traditions are built on circular breathing through reed instruments, and it sounds like what I’ve been doing in New York since the early ‘80s.”

While he stops short of offering Looms & Legends as an outright political statement, Rothenberg does allow that it is an oasis of concentration and immersion at a moment when our culture is oriented to short attention spans and instant gratification. “I feel like musicians who are doing work of depth need to push back against the TikTok culture,” he says. “In many ways an album like this goes against the grain of our current culture, where music has to grab you in 30 seconds. I can unapologetically say that’s never what I’ve been about.”

Composer and performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 40 years on five continents. He performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi. Rothenberg’s solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads the quartet Crossings 4, with Sylvie Courvoisier, Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara, as well as his longstanding trio Sync, with Jerome Harris (guitars) and Samir Chatterjee (tabla). He has collaborated around the world with fellow improvisers including Evan Parker, Marc Ribot, Sainkho Namchylak, Masahiko Sato, Samm Bennett, Kazu Uchihashi, Paul Dresher and John Zorn. Notable recordings include Lockdown, with Courvoisier and Julian Sartorius on Clean Feed; Quintet for Clarinet and Strings with the Mivos Quartet, World of Odd Harmonics, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi) and Inner Diaspora, all on John Zorn’s Tzadik label; and Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, The Fell Clutch, and Are You Be on Rothenberg’s own Animul label.