JasonBranscum
Composer, trombonist, arranger. Contemporary jazz with Ohio funk underneath it and 70s progressive rock somewhere in the rafters. Based in Cincinnati, playing across Europe, Africa and the States.
Press
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This record really shines and reveals his singular voice on the instrument.
Lisa Bella Donna, composer and modular synthesist
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The music stays in your head long after the last sounds fade.
Marta Ratajczak, Babskim Uchem, Poland. Translated from the Polish.
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Confronting contemporary jazz with the aesthetic of 70s progressive rock.
Longplay, Poland. Translated from the Polish.
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Great interplay between the musicians, some killing solos, and thoughtful tunes.
Andrew Hartman, jazz guitarist, New York
Beyond the Walls of the World
This is an album of alien fairy tales. It was recorded neither for Martians nor children, but for those held captive by the darkest enchantments of modernity; namely you and me.
I crafted this music to draw us out of the mundane world in which we now live, into fantasies in lands both real and imagined, finally arriving at the magical land in which we now live.
Ninety minutes across two discs, written through 2020 and released in May 2021, starting from Tolkien’s essay On Fairy Stories. Nine pieces move through a range of jazz styles, divided by interludes built as strict canons in the baroque sense and played in bebop language. The strings came afterwards, written to answer improvisation already on tape. A limited run ships in a wood-burnt casing I nailed together by hand.
- Personnel
- Jason Branscum, trombone · Brandon Coleman, guitar · Aaron Jacobs, bass guitar · Tom Buckley, drums · Marc Fields, trombone · Justin Dawson, contrabass · Dan Dorff, drums · Josh Kline, saxophone · Kanako Shimasaki and Mariko Shimasaki, violin · Martin Hintz and Shelby Thompson, viola · Phillip Goist, cello
- Recorded, mixed and mastered by Brandon Coleman at the Golden Mean, Cincinnati. String arrangements by Brandon Coleman. Artwork by Fernando Utreras.
Biography
Jason Branscum is a composer, trombonist and arranger based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He grew up in Dayton on soul, rock and hip-hop, then got waylaid by the jazz and funk coming out of the city’s bars. Living in the Land of Funk meant running into the people who wrote the tunes he had been hearing sampled, which is a particular kind of education.
He has played in Europe, Africa, eighteen states and Washington, D.C. His own groups run from standards in a restaurant to fully avant-garde, and he has led metalbaby, Pooma, Children and Tangatang.
He has taught at Music Royale, Noteworthy Music and Music and Arts, and teaches music appreciation at Xavier University. A husband and father of three, he spends what time is left outdoors, in the arts, or thinking about how any of it got here.
What I’m doing now
Direct Current
A Lightning checkout I built so musicians can sell records straight to listeners. Bitcoin in, files out, instantly, with no platform cut and no month-long wait for a payout. It works the same from anywhere in the world, and it runs the buy page on this site.
My jazz groups
Writing and leading is still the centre of it. The quartet plays on, alongside groups sized to whatever room I’m in: standards at one end, fully avant-garde at the other. Records and scores go out through Bandcamp.
Tough Friend
Matt McAllister’s Cincinnati octet, playing his compositions: chamber writing and free playing carried by a rock rhythm section. All eight of us double on flute. The self-titled record came out in April 2026 and I take the feature on one track. I’m in his quartet too, the Dancers, with Josh Kline and Aaron Jacobs.
Matt Waters
I gig and record with the Cincinnati singer-songwriter’s band constantly. Waters has opened for Luke Combs, AJR, Judah and the Lion, Judy Collins, Tim Reynolds and Here Come the Mummies, played Paycor Stadium for the Cincinnati Music Festival, and done songwriters’ rounds at the Bluebird in Nashville. The book runs from funk through rock, jazz, blues and reggae to straight ballads.
Mike Sharfe’s groups
Sharfe has played bass in Cincinnati for five decades and turns up on more than 250 records. He started the Blue Wisp Trio with Steve Schmidt and John von Ohlen, still plays in the Blue Wisp Big Band, and has toured with Adrian Belew and with Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops. He is in the Cincinnati Jazz Hall of Fame. I work with several of his bands, most often Mambo Combo, which takes standards through a Cuban lens.
Mrs. Lanterman’s Trinkets
An investigation you play rather than read. A town that remembers, thirty fragments to find, four seals on a door. Lisa Bella Donna recorded it and plays drums and guitar. Three pieces so far: “While You’re Young”, “Sweat And Coffee” and “Haunted Peace”.
Selected collaborations
Recorded, toured, or shared the stage with
- Roy Hargrove
- Lisa Bella Donna
- Dr. John
- George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars
- Gladys Knight
- Sugarfoot and Marshall Jones of the Ohio Players
- Rick James’s Stone City Band
- Slave
- The Hughes Corporation
- Kim Deal
- 10,000 Maniacs
- Umphrey’s McGee
- Mike Gordon
- J.D. Allen
- Robert Walter
- Barry Ries
- Bennie Cowan
- Jonathan Nelson
- Al Wilson
- Louis Johnson of the Brothers Johnson
Shared a bill with
- The Roots
- Talib Kweli
- Eric Harland
- T.S. Monk
- The Rebirth Brass Band
- Zapp
- Midnight Star
- Dwele
- Carl Carlton
- Groove Collective
- The Mary Jane Girls
- REO Speedwagon
- Tiempo Libre
- Gilberto Santa Rosa
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