Byron Asher is a saxophonist and clarinetist and composer based in New Orleans and working at the intersection of broadly experimental composition and jazz and improvised music.
His practice is dedicated to exploring new sounds across genre, and he is committed to building community through assembling and participating in ensembles that bring together musicians from a diversity of training and aesthetic backgrounds.
Raised in Maryland, he has performed across Europe and the US at major art centers and festivals as well as at dive bars and DIY spaces. Festivals include the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and French Quarter Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, Jazz a Vienne, France, and the Karlovy Vary Jazz Festival, Czech Republic. He has also played shows and festivals in Germany, Poland, and Slovakia and has had his compositions featured at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
He is a 2022 OneBeat Fellow, a program of the US State Department. As a composer, Byron’s work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony, South Arts, A Studio In The Woods (New Orleans), the Jazz And Heritage Foundation (New Orleans), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC), the Marigny Opera Ballet (New Orleans), and the Puffin Foundation (Teaneck, NJ).
Based in Louisiana since 2011, Byron leads Skrontch Music, an award-winning experimental large ensemble, and Basher, a “free jazz party band,” and is an equal collaborator in Flaxan, a brass and woodwind chamber quartet, and Nutria, among many other projects. Also an educator, Byron is adjunct faculty in the music department at the University of New Orleans.