Briggan Krauss Solo

In 1994, in the basement of a Brooklyn brownstone, the saxophonist Briggan Krauss couldn’t figure out how to practice. He’d recently finished his degree in Washington state and relocated to New York to join its exploratory scene, but the only rehearsal room he could afford was a subterranean closet in the building where he lived. It was so loud that even playing with headphones on didn’t help. So Krauss reached into his saxophone case, grabbed a cotton cloth he often used to clean his instrument, and stuffed it into his bell. Something magical happened: “It was like instantly having a completely different instrument in my hands,” he once wrote.

In the 30 years since that discovery, Krauss has become an accomplished and acclaimed New York linchpin, from his long and continuing tenure in Sexmob to work alongside Bill Frisell, John Zorn, and Anthony Coleman. He is also a multimedia artist with interests in combining visuals and electroacoustic music. But his most personal and epiphanic work may be his ongoing Art of the Saxophone series, where he uses extended techniques and interesting spaces to explore ways that the saxophone may yet still become a completely different instrument in his hands. Using his towel mute, his saxophone’s sound sometimes seems to be rising from inside the earth’s crust, as if leaking from a mudpot. Pressing the instrument against its knee, its barrage of notes seems to be pouring from a dozen instruments at once. Krauss performs with Sexmob and Marc Ribot at Big Ears 2026 and presents a solo set of his incredible acoustic discoveries.

Briggan Krauss plays BARI reeds.