EZRA is a collective of classical, jazz, rock, and bluegrass musicians focused on the creation of genre-crossing and style-inclusive new music. The ensemble consists of award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Jones on guitar and piano, world-renowned mandolinist Jacob Jolliff, banjo virtuoso Max Allard, and bassist extraordinaire Craig Butterfield.

With a focus on collaboration, the group has performed and recorded with musical polymath and instrument inventor Mark Stewart, composer Elizabeth Ogonek, pianist/Moog-master Xak Bjerken, and has been in residence at several universities, including Cornell, Oberlin College, University of South Carolina, UNC Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and East Carolina University. EZRA has released two albums, the debut album EZRA in March 2024, followed by Earth to EZRA in September 2024. EZRA’s third album Froggy’s Demise will be released in May 2025.

BAND HISTORY

Jesse Jones met each of EZRA’s other three core musicians in a different decade of his life: Jones met a young Jacob Jolliff at a bluegrass camp in 1999; he met Craig Butterfield in 2013 while both were on faculty at University of South Carolina; and he met Max Allard in the fall of 2021 at Oberlin Conservatory, where Jones is currently Associate Professor of Composition, and Allard is studying composition and playing banjo. It was however not until January 2023 that all four members of the quartet sat down to play together for the very first time, and one week later, they recorded their first album, their self-titled debut album EZRA, released in March 2024 with Adhyâropa Records.

Jones had been waiting for the right moment and the right musicians for a long time. Jones says, “I sat alone in my living room for at least a decade playing through the dozens of compositions I had in my head. When I met Craig, who shared a lot of similar classical, roots, and folk interests, I decided to stretch myself and see if I could hang (musically) with a world-class musician like him. We hit it off, and from 2013 through 2019 we co-wrote and recorded three albums as a duo. I grew immeasurably as a musician as a result.”

Jones continues, “When the pandemic closed everything down, I found myself back in my living room, writing tune after tune alone with my instruments. In 2021, I fortuitously reconnected with an old friend, the phenomenal mandolinist Jacob Jolliff, and around the same time became acquainted with banjo wunderkind Max Allard. I jumped on the chance to get these guys together and record nine of the tunes I had lying around.” Those nine pieces became the self-titled debut album EZRA.

For their second album, EZRA invited a few new collaborators to be a part of the project. They met up in October 2023 in North Adams, Massachusetts at the home of musical polymath and instrument inventor Mark Stewart. Along with pianist/Moog-master Xak Bjerken and composer Elizabeth Ogonek, the group explored the most unexpected addition to their sound for the new album: a microtonal organ designed by David Rothenberg and built by synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog in the mid 1960s. The 478-key instrument divides the octave into 31 equal parts, but was never actually functional until 2023, when electronic music scholar and instrument builder Travis Johns began the meticulous process of making the organ playable. The seven musicians spent a week together exploring the Moog and Stewart’s homemade instruments, and they emerged with the album Earth to EZRA (released September 2024 with Cantaloupe Music). This album included three improvisatory tracks, and added one composition by each Allard, Butterfield and Jeffry Eckels (a friend of Butterfield’s).

The third album Froggy’s Demise (May 2025) is back to the original quartet. And there’s already a fourth album in the can, which will feature pianist Xak Bjerken. Look for that later in 2025 or early 2026. It’s an embarrassment of riches with EZRA, but it seems that now that they’ve all found each other, they are making up for lost time, or at least making the most of the time they have got.