Jon Gordon Nonet

Jon Gordon brings his billed Nonet to Dizzy’s Club for a performance centered on “Michel,” a new Chamber Music America commission. Inspired by Gordon’s longtime friend Michel and by Michel’s family’s escape from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, the work reflects on survival and hope through a deeply personal story. Gordon plays alto saxophone, with Alan Ferber on trombone, Alex Goodman on guitar, Matt Clohesy on bass, and Mark Ferber on drums. The listing identifies the group as a nonet while naming these five musicians in the performance lineup.

New York-born alto saxophonist, composer and educator Jon Gordon won the 1996 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition and is now a professor at the University of Manitoba. His work has earned repeated DownBeat Critics Poll recognition. Phil Woods called him “one of the greatest alto players ever,” while Wayne Shorter said Gordon had “embraced the history of his instrument.” Gordon’s nonet project Stranger Than Fiction has included Derrick Gardner, John Ellis and Alan Ferber. Reviewing that music, Glide heard it as “beautiful, urgent, confrontational, and filled with tension”; JazzTimes praised its “layered sophistication,” adding that Gordon “wields the pen more memorably than the horn.”