For those unaware, after moving to NYC thirty years ago, saxophonist, composer, and educator David Bixler cut his teeth touring the world with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Toshiko Akioshi.

He later joined the Chico O’Farrill Afro-Cuban Big Band, with whom he played a decade-long residency of Sunday evenings at Birdland and won a LATIN GRAMMY for the recording, Final Night at Birdland.

The passage of time encompassed a twelve year period of managing his son’s health issues which caused a humbling reboot to his priorities in life and the role of music in it.

In the summer of 2016, after reevaluating his circumstances he recorded In the Face of Chaos (2019) with Bixler, Boccato, Cowherd, and Sturm, Blended Lineage (2020) with the Bixtet, and Inside the Grief (2020) with trio incognito.

His latest project, BEATitude was released this past January 2024 and is, and without a shadow of a doubt, one of his most finest works to date.

Bixler also serves as Director of Jazz Studies at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio and as both a Selmer and Vandoren Artist he is active as a clinician and performer throughout the world.

1. A Power Deferred
2. Balm
3. Hide Seek Find
4. Down/Up
5. Peace Prize
6. I Spy
7. Clement
8. Lost Hours? No

This breathtakingly enlightening new musical opus opens on the all-encompassing A Power Deferred and the luxuriant Balm and then brings us the opulent Hide Seek Find and the low slung, languishing Down/Up.

Along next is the playful Peace Prize, which is in turn backed by the ambient I Spy, the album rounding out on the sheer gossamer within Clement, closing on the harmonically jaunty Lost Hours? No.

www.davidbixler.com