What If, Is

media release: What If, Is is a new band featuring Jason Kutz, Tony Barba, John Christensen and Devin Drobka.

Jason Kutz grew up in a highly musical family in Kiel, Wisconsin, a small town in the countryside. He studied piano and percussion at a young age, and eventually went on to receive his B.M. in Recording Technology/Music Industry from UW Oshkosh and M.M. in Piano Performance from UW Madison, studying both classical and jazz. He still resides in Madison where he works as a pianist, composer, teacher, arranger, artist, graphic designer, and sound engineer. He tours regularly around the Midwest with Opera for the Young, a professional outreach opera company that performs abridged operas for elementary schools. He is a three-time concerto competition winner, and has recently travelled to Beijing, China to teach a summer program at the Magic Piano Arts Academy. His musical interests lie wholly within and between the classical and jazz worlds. All music is constructed with the same building blocks, and it's only with small changes in formula that genre and affect differ. His greatest interest is discovering and blending these borders, and using them as fuel for each musical project.

Tony Barba is a saxophonist/educator/producer whose career has spanned the last twenty-five years. Originally hailing from Acton, Massachusetts and previously living in NYC and Chicago, Tony has resided in Madison, Wisconsin since 2013. He has performed, taught and toured professionally all over the world. A long standing member of the globe trotting Youngblood Brass Band, Tony has also performed and recorded with such notable and diverse artists as Makaya McCraven, Bon Iver, David Murray, Josh Ritter, the Mountain Goats, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and the Temptations. In Madison he is currently a member of Acoplados, Golpe Tierra, Immigre, Michael Brenneis’s Plutonium, and the Paul Dietrich Jazz Orchestra. He co-leads the organ quartet Barbacoa and the improvised duo project Outside the Sphere with drummer Michael Brenneis. Additionally, Tony leads Blood Moon, a new quartet with an album of all original music which is slated to be released in the spring of 2020. He also has recently released two solo albums featuring saxophone and electronic manipulation entitled Winter’s Arms (2016) and Ether (2019). Tony has been the instructor of the Memorial High School Jazz Band since 2017 and has a growing private studio of saxophone students.

John Christensen began his bass studies with Chris Wood in high school. After brief stints at Berklee College and North Texas, John moved to San Francisco and played in the burgeoning music scene during the late 90’s. There he learned and grew playing with Scott Amenodola, Jenny Scheinman, Liberty Ellman, Hal Stein, Mark Levine, Adam Levy, Slide Five, Vijay Iyer, as well as his own trio, Dam East. Since Moving to Wisconsin in 1999 John has played with numerous local artists and bands including Louka Patenaude, Alison Margaret, Anthony Deutsch, Tony Barba, Jonathan Greenstein, Anders Svanoe, Johannes Wallmann and Harmonious Wail. John also is a co-counder of the band Lesser Lakes Trio with longtime collaborators Devin Drobka and Jamie Breiwick. Also has shared the stage with such luminaries as Maria Schnieder, Miguel Zenon and Russ Johnson. John has been an adjunct professor at UW Platteville and has taught throughout the midwest. John’s Atlas project with Johannes Wallmann, Dave Miller and Andrew Green is scheduled to release an album on Shifting Paradigm Records in June 2018.

Devin Drobka is one of the most in-demand and creative musicians in the midwest for the past 15 years. Audiences around the world have been enthralled with his wide sonic palette and limitless rhythmic possibilities on the drums. A deep love of jazz, metal, folk, hip-hop, ambient, idm, and classical music has helped shaped Devin’s unique voice and vision on the drums both as a leader and as a sideman. His highly personal and creative drumming can be heard within the realm of jazz having performed with Greg Osby, Jerry Bergonzi, Dayna Stephens, and Joe Lovano as well as indie- folk bands like Field Report and indie rappers R.A.P. Ferreira and Serengeti. Devin can be heard on over 50 albums of genre bending, original music for which he is an advocate for. Devin currently composes music for his newest group, The Devin Drobka Trio, which draws upon his love of contemporary classical music and minimalism and his multi horn group, Bell Dance Songs, which is a response to his love of Albert Ayler, Paul Motian, and Ornette Coleman. Devin’s music has been described as “sounding like nothing else in midwestern jazz” and “gorgerous, innovative.”