​Sam Eastmond

Sam Eastmond is a composer, arranger, bandleader, trumpet player and producer creating music incorporating a variety of genres including jazz, klezmer, cartoon, rock, surf, world, jewish and Downtown influences. Interweaving improvisation and intricately arranged composition Eastmond's sound world transcends traditional concepts of genre boundaries.

 

He co-founded and leads the Spike Orchestra, a large ensemble who have recorded Four studio albums since 2014, their debut Ghetto (Spike Records), two collaborations with New York legend John Zorn as part of his Masada Book on Tzadik Label, Cerberus: The Spike Orchestra Play Masada Book Two and Binah from the forthcoming Masada Book Three series and the upcoming 2020 Spike Orchestra album

 

"...Arranger Eastmond's inventively effective mix of avant contemporary and more rootsy styles turns out to be a passionately ecelctic reflection on it's subject. With an injection of some Ellingtonian swing, brass voicing evoking Gil Evans' flamenco-ish passages from Sketches of Spain, elements from Brecht-ian Weimar caberet, bop, free improv with Nikki Franklin's non-verbal, avant-improv vocals through to downtown New York klezmer, this is an entirely positive form of commemoration...."

 

**** Jazzwise Magazine

Ghetto review