What is Chamber Jazz Music

Chamber Jazz Music is a genre of jazz music which is really based around small groups of live musicians focusing on lots of improvisation and interplay between the group.  Chamber jazz music has many influences from different music genres including Latin American music, Central European folk music and particularly the traditional Celtic folk music.  There’s definitely a European feel to Chamber Jazz, well, that’s really where it originated from. Just to be extra awkward, many of these Chamber Jazz  ensembles don’t even play the instruments you would normally associate with jazz music, instead having oboes, cymbalums, mandolins or maybe even a tabla.

Representative Chamber Jazz Musicians

Chamber Jazz Music has been played by a select handful of musicians over the decades, notably William Ackerman (founder of Windham Hill Record company which was responsible for releasing Chamber Jazz records) and Frank Zappa, as well as others like the Modern Jazz Quartet, Buddy Collette and Dave Douglas. The Jazz Mandolin Project is another band of chamber jazz musicians.