Joshua Redman is one of the most acclaimed and respected jazz artists to have emerged in our generation. With a career spanning over thirty years, it is hard to imagine a year of firsts for a musician as prolific as Redman. And yet, 2023 proved to be exactly that: launching his debut album, where are we, on the venerable Blue Note Records label, this album was planned largely by phone and text – a direct result of the exigencies of the pandemic - and finds Redman recording with a vocalist and writing lyrics for the first time.

Through the lens of geographic location, Redman and his band march across the United States, asking us to take a critical examination of what we find. Of this particular assemblage, hand-picked for this album, Redman says “The magic of this particular gathering of musicians, was that we were able to come together from points afar, to converge (physically and creatively) in a particular place at a particular time; and to embrace, with fullest imagination and without slightest reservation, the ethic of ‘serving the songs.’ In this sense, where are we is perhaps above all a meditation on the power and importance of place — the unique human beauty created when we locate ourselves in shared physical spaces together with others; the loss, anomie, and angst suffered when we divide ourselves unnaturally and unjustly apart.”

But he wasn’t supposed to be a musician. In 1991 Redman graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude and had already been accepted by Yale Law School, having deferred entrance for what was only supposed to be one year. Instead, he moved to New York City and immediately found himself immersed in the jazz scene. Five months later, Redman won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition and began touring and recording with jazz masters such as Jack DeJohnette, Charlie Haden, Elvin Jones, Joe Lovano, Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, Dewey Redman, and Clark Terry.

As renowned for his musicianship as he is for his prescient ability to assemble talent, one of Redman’s earliest bands, heard on his 1994 album MoodSwing, includes musicians who would later become some of the most influential artists of their generation: pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade. They reunited nearly 30 years later, releasing RoundAgain (2020) and LongGone (2022) to resounding critical acclaim and sold-out performances worldwide.

He has recorded nearly two dozen albums, but Redman’s prodigious talent has taken him beyond the bandstand as well: helming the creation of the SFJAZZ Collective, an ensemble distinguished by a unique emphasis on composition; expanding jazz departments via his appointments as a Visiting Artist at Stanford University and as the Artistic Director of the Roots, Jazz, and American Music program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and writing music for film. He wrote and performed the music for Louis Malle’s final film “Vanya on 42nd Street” and is both seen and heard in the Robert Altman film Kansas City.

He has recorded and/or performed with a vast array of luminaries, both in jazz and beyond: Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, The Dave Matthews Band, Herbie Hancock, Elvin Jones, Quincy Jones, Big Daddy Kane, B.B. King, Yo Yo Ma, The Rolling Stones, The Roots, McCoy Tyner, and Stevie Wonder, to name a few.

Born in Berkeley, California, he is the son of legendary saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff.