The Brooklyn Rail

Brooklyn-based experimental baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson uses his horn alongside pre-programmed synthesizers and electronic instruments to develop sparse melodic motifs that evolve into complex compositions. His brief ostinato lines and fearless use of multiphonics in combination with the oscillations of the electronics produce subtle yet hypnotic asymmetries.

He shared his approach during a recent interview in Lower Manhattan. “Politics organizes the world into ‘for and against,’ but music can cut away the divisiveness inherent in language,” he says. “With my solo work, I’m trying to understand a feeling I have and then trying to reduce it to an idea that is basic enough to be universal.” But the goal of universalism does not come at the cost of originality or sophistication.

Across seven solo releases and two collaborative albums, Parzen-Johnson has been building a distinctive voice since 2012. He says, “I have discomfort running with the pack. If everyone’s going in a certain direction, why would I go that way, too? I want to do something else.” His unique sound relies on a subtle interplay of electronic and acoustic elements. Of his compositions he says, “My work is one hundred percent improvised and one hundred percent composed. At its core, it has a challenging side which is more about texture and an embracing side which is more about melody.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than on You’re Never Really Alone (We Jazz Records) from 2024, where Parzen-Johnson explores our shared human experience of solitude, touching on both its frailty and its irreducibility. The title plays on his experience as a solo performer and the spontaneous community of listeners that emerges at his concerts. Here, Parzen-Johnson coaxes a range of unusual timbres out of his baritone, setting sail along the edge of a single note until the sound disintegrates into growling multiphonics that pulsate like a quasar. The record is evocative of sorrow, joy, and saudade, evident both in the texture of the sounds and the titles of tracks, like “There is So Much I Regret.” If, as Stan Getz once said, the saxophone is the translation of the human voice, then Parzen-Johnson is whispering, wailing, and laughing all at the same time. “A lot of what I’m doing with tone is making it sound like it’s coming in and out of focus, or in and out of function,” he explains. “That the sound is broken, but it’s still moving, in order to explore a range of different sensations.” He steps outside of pitch to deal more squarely with texture, using extended techniques including circular breathing and overtone blowing to produce a kaleidoscopic range.

Parzen-Johson’s exploration of human connection through soundscapes develops further in a recent We Jazz album with Finnish composer and synthesist Lau Nau, titled A Few We Remember. Their 2025 collaboration works up intimate sonic portraits of feelings ranging from curiosity to dread through the narration of encounters with strangers on tracks titled “Flight Attendant” and “Suspicious Commuter.” Lau Nau layers found sounds like twirling metallic coins and the hollow bouncing of ping pong balls with voice and rainfall, while Parzen-Johnson is at his most delicate, floating in and out of step with the atmospheric drones and rattles passing through her modular synth chain. 

A common thread across Parzen-Johnson’s work is an emphasis on collectivity and resisting capitalism’s reductive commodifying tendencies. He tries to bear the standard of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the groundbreaking Chicago-based collective of Black musicians that formed in 1965 and shaped his early musical development. Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, he recalls, “There’s no way to escape the lineage of Chicago. From my very first saxophone lesson there was mention of the idea of improvisation and happenings.” In high school, he was a student of Mwata Bowden—a saxophonist and member of 8 Bold Souls—and a regular at Fred Anderson’s Velvet Lounge jam sessions. He pays explicit homage to Chicago as crucible on 2017’s I Try to Remember Where I Come From (Clean Feed), a powerful electro-acoustic work in which he employs a pedal-board of synths, including a bass oscillator that reacts to his plaintive textures. “This gave it a feeling of breathing along with me,” he says, explaining how he built the synthesizer elements to play independently while also following the volume of his baritone. The guttural yet tenuous tones on tracks like “These Shoulders, Those Shoulders” and “Guns Make Us Murderers” suggests both the possibility of intimacy and the chasms created by racial marginalization and violence.

Listening to Parzen-Johnson’s semi-composed, improvised works bears new fruit on each repeat—the effects resonating well beyond the end of the record. The enveloping nature of the sound can feel like a balm for frayed nerves, but its underlying function is more important. “It’s kind of like alchemy,” he says. “Art can take mundane things that already exist and create things that have never existed before.” Interrupting the indifference of hearing with the imperative to listen, Parzen-Johnson’s music offers a platform for imagining a future we’d like to live in.