Name: Ochion Jewell
I’m from… Kentucky/California/Brooklyn
I started teaching music in… 2002
I started teaching at the Conservatory in… 2010
My inspiration: Arvo Pärt, Nicola Tesla, Daniel Day Lewis, Sarah Vaughn, Miles Davis, Pablo Picasso, Michael Jordan, Slavoj Žižek, Jimi Hendrix
Few people know that I… am an obsessed college basketball fanatic.
Education: University of Louisville – BM, Performance
California Institute of the Arts – MFA, Jazz Studies
I play and teach: Tenor Saxophone – I teach all woodwinds
My other artistic/musical endeavors: Ochion Jewell Quartet, Bedstuy Ewe Ensemble, Bohio Music, duo with Cat Toren
Biography: Since moving to Brooklyn in 2009, saxophonist/composer Ochion Jewell has been awarded artist grants from NewMusicUSA, the Brooklyn Arts Council, California Institute of the Arts, and Toyota/Kentucky Center for the Arts, as well as from Brooklyn Conservatory of Music’s Knuston Fund (to study the Nonviolent Communication method used to mediate global conflict). The NYC Jazz Review named Ochion’s first and second albums (“First Suite for Quartet” and “VOLK”) on their “best of the year” list, Downbeat Magazine gave VOLK 4 1/2 stars and featured the album as a top pick of 2016, and the album was heralded as a “Top-10 of the Year” by Patrick Jarenwattananon (NPR Critics Poll) and Cadence Magazine, and “Best New Releases” by Jazz Journalists Association and JazzEd Magazine Readers’ Poll.
Ochion earned a Bachelor’s in Classical Performance from the University of Louisville and an MFA from California Institute for the Arts, where he majored in Jazz Studies but ended up studying Ghanaian Ewe drumming, Persian Ney, Armenian traditional music, North Indian music, North African Gnawa, and Javanese Gamelan, as well as composition, contemporary improvisation techniques, and of course, traditional and contemporary jazz.
Ochion has collaborated professionally with world-renowned visual artist Marc Lafia, filmmaker/activist Mariam Ghani, Grammy-winning musicians Charlie Haden, Lionel Loueke, and Joe LaBarbera, composer/drummer Qasim Naqvi, the Haitian ensemble Bohio Music, and a majority of the Brooklyn jazz and free improvisation community. He’s held concerts of original music in the Guggenheim Museum, PS1 MOMA, the Rubin Museum of Art, the Met Breuer, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. As a sideman in Louisville some years ago, Ochion also had a unique experience in performing with national touring artists who pass through town and hire local musicians to expand their touring band, including legends Smokey Robinson, Chaka Khan, Macy Gray, Meatloaf, and Michael McDonald.
Ochion lives in Brooklyn, teaches for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, is a founding member of the Bedstuy Ewe Ensemble, and plays in the NYC jazz, free improvisation, new music, R&B/pop, and world music scenes. In 2021, he and frequent collaborator, Cat Toren, launched a performance and interview video podcast series on YouTube called “Brooklyn Living Room Sessions.”
