Mike McGinnis

Over nearly three decades on the New York jazz scene, saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and Selmer artist Mike McGinnis has amassed a body of genre-defying work that includes seven critically acclaimed albums as a leader, beginning with Tangents (RKM Music) in 2000. Named a Rising Star Clarinetist in every DownBeat Critics Poll since 2014, he has explored a wide range of instrumentation throughout his career: from Mike McGinnis +9 (Road*Trip, Road*Trip II: Outing) to the multimedia landscape tone poem Angsudden Song Cycle (482 Music); from eclectic chamber jazz to lyrical trio exposition with jazz legends Art Lande and Steve Swallow (Singular Awakening, Recurring Dream, both on Sunnyside). Road*Trip, inspired by the underappreciated work of clarinetist and pioneering Third Stream composer Bill Smith, received a 4 ½-star review from DownBeat. Road*Trip II: Outing was a featured pick on NPR Music’s New Music Friday, co-hosted by Felix Contreras and WRTI’s Nate Chinen. McGinnis has also enjoyed long-running associations with Yo La Tengo, Stew and the Negro Problem, Brian Carpenter’s Ghosttrain Orchestra, the Bernie Worrell Orchestra, the Erik Deutsch Band, the Lonnie Plaxico Group, the Hank Roberts Sextet, Gino Sitson’s Echo Chamber, the Wildebeest Wind Quintet, Dana Lyn’s Mother Octopus and more. Additional performance credits include Anthony Braxton, Alice and Ravi Coltrane, Ben Goldberg, Peter Apfelbaum, Gerald Cleaver, Steve Coleman and other major jazz artists of our time. As musical director of the Davalois Fearon Dance Company, McGinnis has performed his compositions at the Joyce Theater, New Victory Theater, City Center, Metropolitan Museum, Harlem Stage, Rubin Museum and Bronx Museum. He has also performed on Broadway in the Tony-winning Fela!, and on film in the Oscar-winning director Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock. He is on faculty at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and leads clinics and master classes in the U.S. and internationally.