Please join us in our long-awaited release of our debut album, “The New Day Bends Light,” an exploration of psychological themes of mental illness, struggle, and healing. We will perform the complete set of music from the album and have CDs available for sale!

“In terms of majestic sweep, cinematic scope and clever outside-the-box humor, it’s hard to think of a more interesting group in big band jazz than the Erica Seguine | Shon Baker Orchestra” writes the New York Music Daily. Giovanni Russonello of the New York Times described the Seguine/Baker Orchestra’s music as “Vast, multifaceted, semi-abstract compositions that deal in dissonance and overload but often resolve into major-key resplendence.”

Founded in 2011, the Erica Seguine | Shon Baker Orchestra has been performing original music by its co-leaders for over a decade in NYC. Each composition by Erica and Shon immerses the listener into a unique complex sonic world through musical storytelling and through the personal voices of the 21 musicians in their ensemble. Their upcoming debut album, “The New Day Bends Light,” which will be released March 31, 2023, was produced by renowned composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue, and deals with psychological themes of mental illness, struggle, and healing.

Erica Seguine is a multiple award-winning composer, including the recipient of the 2013 BMI Foundation Charlie Parker Prize for Jazz Composition/2014 Manny Albam Commission, three ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Awards, the 2014 ASCAP Foundation Johnny Mandel Prize, and a commission from New York Youth Symphony Jazz. Her compositions and arrangements have been performed by ensembles such as the Metropole Orchestra, the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra, the Danish Radio Big Band, the Brilliant Corners Large Ensemble, the J-Orchestra, and many other professional and college jazz ensembles. She has also worked as a conductor with: Meg Okura’s Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, Remy Le Boeuf’s Assembly of Shadows, the D.O.M.E. Experience, the Joel Harrison Big Band, and is a resident conductor and composer with the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra. She is also part of the core team and event host with JazzComposersPresent.com, an invaluable resource which features composer spotlights and listening sessions from many of the finest jazz composers of today.

Courageous, heart-driven, and often immersing the listener into darkness, with moments of light, Shon Baker’s music is written from an intuitive awareness of energy and its influences on the human psyche. Feelings of grief, loss, isolation and brokenness emerge to the surface through their music, resulting in clarity, hope, beauty and healing.

(Photo by Desmond White)