Jen Baker

Trombonist Jen Baker is a new music specialist and has performed internationally in ensembles spanning from orchestra to free improvisation. Baker has performed and collaborated with Stuart Dempster, Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Yoko Ono, Cecil Taylor, Leo Wadada Smith, Joelle Leandre, Alvin Curran, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and choreographers Susan Marshall and Mark Dechiazzi. She has performed in the International and Eastern Trombone Workshops, London's Barbican Center, Lincoln Center Outdoors, No’west Improvised Music Festival, Kennedy Center's Women in Jazz Festival, International Society of Improvised Music (ISIM) Conference, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Santa Cruz Symphony, and Vermont Symphony.An active commissioner of new solo works for trombone, she has performed new solo works on the east and west coasts. Baker’s solo multiphonic project, Lyrical Vibrations, has been performed around the country and can also be heard on her solo album, Blue Dreams. She is currently performing transcriptions of her own improvisations and collaborating with other composers in her ongoing attempt to improve the repertoire for solo trombone.Baker can also be heard on Werner Herzog’s soundtrack Encounters at the End of the World, Bang on A Can's Asphalt Orchestra, and the Mountain Goats Get Lonely album. Her solo and improvisation works can be heard on Music + One on Rastascan Records, Untitled 1959 on Kadima, and Blue Dreams on her own label, Dilapidated Barns.Jen freelances in New York City and has taught music extensively in composition, improvisation, classical brass and piano, and homemade instruments. Aside from teaching and performing, she has a sound healing practice using the didgeridoo and other instruments. She received music degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM) and Mills College (MFA).