Joshua Redman

American saxophonist Joshua Redman was born in 1969 in Berkeley, California. He grew up in a musical environment shaped by his father, saxophonist Dewey Redman, and developed an early interest in jazz and improvised music. After studying social sciences at Harvard, Redman moved to New York in the early 1990s, where he made his mark on the club scene and then won the Thelonious Monk competition in 1991, an achievement that decisively set him on a musical career. His early albums, Joshua Redman (1993), Wish (1993) and MoodSwing (1994), established a style rooted in post-bop and contemporary jazz, combining melodic lyricism, a strong sense of groove and an affinity for open forms. Over the years he has alternated between quartets, trios and larger ensembles, exploring both acoustic jazz and textures tinged with funk and soul, as on Elastic (2002) and Momentum (2005). Active in several collective ensembles, notably the SFJAZZ Collective, he has maintained long-term collaborations with musicians from the New York scene. Recordings such as Walking Shadows (2013), The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (2015), Nearness with Brad Mehldau (2016) and Where Are We (2023) demonstrate the variety of formats he has tackled, from reinterpretations of standards to original compositions and concept projects focused on song and the American popular repertoire.