Joshua Redman Quartet

“One of the 21st century’s finest jazz improvisers” (The Guardian), saxophonist and composer Joshua Redman brings back his current quartet with pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip Norris, and drummer Nazir Ebo, performing material from his 2025 Blue Note album Words Fall Short — his second for the label and first with this remarkable ensemble of young masters-in-the-making.  

Assembled after the first leg of his tour for his 2023 release Where Are We, Redman knew this new band was going to make waves. “My approach to band leading is unchanged,” Redman says.“ Play with the best musicians I can find, virtuosos who have mastered all the different jazz vocabularies, but who are also great listeners and collaborators—who know how to express their individual brilliance through group improvisation and collective interaction.” 

After 20 studio albums as a leader, co-leading the all-star groups James Farm and Yaya3, co-founding and performing with our own SFJAZZ Collective, and serving as a sideman to the likes of McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, and Elvin Jones, the Berkeley-born Redman has built an incomparable career as an innovator and restless seeker. 

With Words Fall Short, Redman embraces the idea of imperfection and language’s inadequacy to capture and express the depth of human feeling, saying, “Perfection is unattainable. But it’s that struggle, that fallibility, that makes us so marvelously and exquisitely human.”