Byron Asher is a saxophonist, clarinetist and composer based in New Orleans and working at the intersection of broadly experimental composition and jazz and improvised music.

Since arriving there in 2011, he has become an integral member of New Orleans’ creative music community as a bandleader, collaborator, improviser, composer, and curator. His practice is dedicated to exploring new sounds across genre, and he is committed to building community through assembling and participating in ensembles that bring together musicians from a diversity of training and aesthetic backgrounds.

Raised in Maryland, he has performed across Europe and the US at major art centers and festivals as well as at dive bars and DIY spaces. Festivals include the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and French Quarter Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, Jazz a Vienne, France, and the Karlovy Vary Jazz Festival, Czech Republic. He has also played shows and festivals in Germany, Poland, and Slovakia and has had his compositions featured at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

He was a 2022 OneBeat Fellow, a program of the US State Department, for which he was an artist in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida). As a composer, Byron has held residencies at MacDowell (New Hampshire), A Studio In The Woods (New Orleans) and Barn Arts (Maine). His work has been funded by the Doris Duke Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC), South Arts (Atlanta), the Jazz And Heritage Foundation (NOLA), the Threadhead Cultural Foundation (NOLA), and the Puffin Foundation (Teaneck, NJ).

Byron maintains an active performing and recording schedule in New Orleans and around the US as a leader and a sideman. His award-winning Skrontch Music large ensemble released its second recording, Lord, when you send the rain, on Sinking City Records in 2024. Their 2019 debut recording was named a top 20 jazz release of the year by textura.org. Byron’s “free jazz party band” Basher’s 2022 release Doubles received 4 stars from Downbeat Magazine and was called “unbearably beautiful” by Pitchfork. A new Basher recording, May Day, was released in May 2024. He has released three albums with his collaboratively led trio, Nutria. In 2021, his duo recording with drummer Brad Webb, Little Bigby, was nominated for Best Contemporary Jazz Recording by New Orleans’ Offbeat Magazine.

Byron is also adjunct music faculty at the University of New Orleans, where he teaches classes and ensembles for undergraduate and graduate students.

For his rolling residency at Bacchanal on Monday evenings, Byron invites a rotating cast of collaborators and local musicians each week, ranging from intimate duo performances to some of his larger ensembles.

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6pm - 9pm

No Cover

Full Bar, Specialty Wine & Food Menu Available