Earth to EZRA
Ever wondered where the worlds of progressive bluegrass music and microtonal synthesis might intersect? The EZRA ensemble is game to answer the question on their adventurous second album, Earth to EZRA. Convening in an intimate studio in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, the core quartet — composer and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Jones (guitars and vocals), Jacob Jolliff (mandolin), Max Allard (banjo) and Craig Butterfield (double bass) — teamed up with musical polymath Mark Stewart and keyboardist Xak Bjerken to craft a complex recording that is by turns whimsical, uplifting, haunting and otherworldly. And you can dance to it.
More succinctly, Elizabeth Ogonek describes the project as “a wild, surreal, and totally joyful album — a ‘cycle’ to be listened to from beginning to end.” The sonic beast at the center of Earth to EZRA is 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.
Produced by Xak Bjerken and Elizabeth Ogonek
Recorded by Dave Dennison at Studio 9
in North Adams, MA on October 21-22, 2023
Mixed by Dave Sinko
Edited and mastered by Jeff Francis
Earth to EZRA was released September 6, 2024 with Cantaloupe Music.
From left: Xak Bjerken, Craig Butterfield, Jacob Jolliff, Jesse Jones, Max Allard, and Mark Stewart in North Adams, MA in October 2023.
“It’s a stunning fusion that shouldn’t really make sense, but absolutely works perfectly, such is the musicianship involved.”
EZRA
What do you get when you take two seasoned conservatory professors (one for composition at Oberlin Conservatory and one for double bass studies at the University of South Carolina), add one of the best mandolin players in the world in any genre, throw in a young banjo phenom, and put them all together to play new chamber music using bluegrass instrumentation? You get EZRA.
“New, out of this world progressive string music.”
— Jason Marck, Radio Z, WBEZ Chicago
Founded by award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Jesse Jones, EZRA is comprised of Jacob Jolliff (mandolin), Max Allard (banjo), Craig Butterfield (double bass) and Jones on guitar and piano. Jones, who is also a luthier, built some of the instruments he plays, and he composed all nine of the works on their self-titled debut album.
Jesse Jones met each of the other three musicians in EZRA in a different decade of his life: Jones met a young Jacob Jolliff at a bluegrass camp in 1999; Jones met Craig Butterfield in 2013, while both were on faculty at University of South Carolina; and Jones met Max Allard in the fall of 2021 at Oberlin Conservatory, where Jones is currently a composition professor and Allard is studying composition and playing banjo. The quartet sat down to play together for the very first time in January 2023, and one week later, they had recorded their first album.
Recorded and engineered by Paul Eachus and mastered by Dave Sinko (Punch Brothers, Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer), this album captures lightning in a bottle for these first time collaborators.
EZRA was released March 1, 2024 on Adhyâropa Records.
This is an incredibly potent album with a high string wizardry quotient and lots of heart.
Almost 40 years on from the rise of the new acoustic music movement, there’s still a lot of life left in the genre, and EZRA, on their debut album, have already shown themselves to be in the vanguard.
—George Graham, Mixed Bag, The Graham Album Review
Up there with Béla Fleck as explorers on the outer fringes of Bluegrass.