Erik Jekabson is a freelance trumpet player, composer, arranger and educator who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is equally busy playing and composing for different bands, leading his own groups, (the Erik Jekabson Sextet, the String-tet and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra) teaching a wide variety of students and running the Young Musicians Program at the California Jazz Conservatory.
Erik has eight CDs out under his own name: his most recent album is “One Note at a Time” (2020) on the Wide Hive label. His other CDs are: “Erik Jekabson Sextet” (2018) and “Erik Jekabson Quintet” on the Wide Hive label, “A Brand New Take” (2016) on the OA2 record label, and “Erik Jekabson Quartet & John Santos: Live at the Hillside Club”, (2014) ,“Anti-Mass”(2012) , and “Crescent Boulevard” (2010) which are on his own Jekab’s Music record label. His debut CD, “Intersection”, was recorded in New York in 2002 and released on the Fresh Sound/New Talent label.
Erik has also co-produced and played on five other recordings which are widely available: The Electric Squeezebox Orchestra’s “Matter Is” (2019, DoubleOone Records) “The Falling Dream” (2018) and “Cheap Rent” (2015)(OA2 Records), “Vista: the Arrival” (2000) and “New World Funk Ensemble”(1998, Turnipseed Music). He’s recorded as a sideman on numerous other jazz recordings, as well as doing session work in many other genres of music and on movie and video game soundtracks.
He’s spent time on the road with Illinois Jacquet, John Mayer, Galactic, and the Howard Fishman Quartet, and has performed at such notable venues as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Algonquin Room, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Madison Square Garden, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with David Letterman.
As an arranger and composer, he’s arranged for both vocalists (Madeleine Peyroux, Ani DiFranco, Jane Krakowski, Jackie Ryan, Kenny Washington, Madeline Eastman, Kellye Gray, Kalil Wilson, Sandy Cressman, Raz Kennedy, Rachel Efron and the spoken word artist Avotcja) and instrumental ensembles. (San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, Stanford Jazz Orchestra, Realistic Orchestra, California State University East Bay Jazz Ensemble, SF Composers Orchestra and his own Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, which plays every Sunday at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley.)
Erik currently leads his own ensembles in the Bay Area.
