VISIONARY SAXOPHONIST BEN WENDEL UNVEILS BaRcoDe — A DARING NEW ELECTROACOUSTIC VISION FOR SAXOPHONE AND MALLETS
THE GRAMMY®-NOMINATED, FORWARD-THINKING ARTIST RETURNS WITH THE DEBUT ALBUM FROM HIS SHAPE-SHIFTING ENSEMBLE FEATURING VIBRAPHONISTS JOEL ROSS, SIMON MOULLIER, PATRICIA BRENNAN, AND JUAN DIEGO VILLALOBOS
OUT MARCH 13th, 2026, 2026 VIA EDITION RECORDS
GRAMMY®-nominated saxophonist, composer, and Kneebody co-founder Ben Wendel is proud to announce the self-titled debut album from his new ensemble, BaRcoDe. Featuring a powerhouse lineup of genre-defying vibraphonists and percussionists — Joel Ross, Simon Moullier, Patricia Brennan, and Juan Diego Villalobos — the group developed its sound across two multi-night residencies at The Jazz Gallery in 2023 and 2025. The resulting album, recorded in early 2025 at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, marks an intrepid new chapter in Wendel’s creative trajectory, blending intricate composition with chamber textures and electroacoustic interplay. BaRcoDe will be released on March 13th, 2026 via Edition Records.
A two-time GRAMMY® nominee, Wendel earned recognition in 2024 for All One (Best Contemporary Instrumental Album), and in 2010 for Twelve Songs by Charles Ives, a collaboration between Kneebody and Theo Bleckmann (Best Classical Crossover Album). His music — spanning post-bop, chamber jazz, modern composition, and electronic experimentation — has drawn praise for its range and originality.
Wendel has been the subject of glowing features in The NY Times, DownBeat, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and more. All About Jazz lauded his 2012 album Frame, writing, “The saxophonist inhabits a sound as close to singing through the reed as is humanly possible.” Jazz Weekly, reviewing All One, noted: “Wendel creates an elegiac album without drum and bass… mixing fanfares, declarations, impressions and standards with a mix-and-match team of artists.”
BaRcoDe brings together four of the most innovative voices in contemporary percussion. Joel Ross, a Blue Note recording artist, has redefined the vibraphone through acclaimed releases like KingMaker and The Parable of the Poet, and is widely regarded as one of his generation’s most expressive improvisers. Simon Moullier — praised by Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock, and known for his customized quarter-tone vibraphone — expands the instrument’s vocabulary with global idioms and electronics.
Patricia Brennan is celebrated for her exploratory solo work and collaborations with avant-garde leaders like Mary Halvorson and John Zorn, using extended techniques and real-time processing to reimagine the vibraphone’s role. Venezuelan-born Juan Diego Villalobos draws on Afro-Caribbean traditions and experimental electronics, bringing a folkloric yet futuristic energy to the ensemble’s sound.
“This is just me continuing to be me. I just can’t seem to do normal projects,” Wendel says with a laugh. (Case in point: All One, recorded during lockdown, featured an “orchestra of himself” — layered woodwinds of saxophone and bassoon with a different guest soloist on each track.)
Noticing a surge of remarkable young vibraphonists on the scene, the concept for BaRcoDe crystallized when Wendel received a commission from Rio Sakairi, Artistic Director of The Jazz Gallery. “I thought it would be really cool to highlight that emergence — and speak to my own upbringing and love of classical and new music.”
One key inspiration was Sō Percussion, the boundary-pushing ensemble known for collaborations with artists ranging from Vijay Iyer to Philip Glass — and with whom Wendel connected during his undergraduate years at the Eastman School of Music. “I’ve always had that sound in my head,” he explains. “I thought, let me write something for an ensemble of players that could be a really cool meeting of worlds.” As the music incubated during the Jazz Gallery residencies, each musician’s role crystallized. The result, Wendel says, “lives in its own little universe.”
BaRcoDe opens with “Clouds”, an homage to the minimalist aesthetic of percussion quartets. “It begins with two vibraphonists hocketing off each other,” Wendel says. “I wanted to write something that showcases what the vibraphone can do — those leaping, intervallic lines — but also translate that to the saxophone. I really challenged myself to make it virtuosic in that way.”
Wendel’s original “Mimo,” is titled after the Czech word for “outside” — a quiet tribute to his Czech-born wife. “It can mean ‘outside’ literally, or it can mean metaphorically — to be outside of something,” Wendel explains. “I thought it was a nice word for this piece that shifts through identities and goes in and out of different meters.”
Wendel calls Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “Olha Maria” “one of my favorite compositions of all time,” and renders it here with quiet reverence. “It’s been covered in so many different ways, but in this instrumentation, I saw a way forward. Harmonically, it remains pretty true to the original, but I added and extended some sections to create solo forms and whatnot.”
Kneebody fans may recognize “Repeat After Me” from the band’s 2025 album Reach. “That’s going to be really fun for people to hear,” Wendel predicts. “The vibraphone–marimba version of this piece, and then Kneebody’s jazz-on-steroids version.” He adds: “It’s actually a subtly difficult song, because it’s essentially a repeated note that never really repeats in a predictable pattern. It’s almost like Morse code.”
“Birds Ascend,” is loosely inspired by British pianist Kit Downes and Scottish contemporary fiddle player and composer Aidan O’Rourke. Mostly through-composed, it pushes the virtuosic potential of both Wendel and his ensemble.
BaRcoDe closes with “Lonely One,” in which Wendel brings out his signature whistling technique, though the title hints at something deeper. A child of divorce, Wendel spent long stretches of his youth alone. “It was a mixture of being lonely, but also really enjoying being alone — just being in my own world. Those memories and the feeling they evoke I call my ‘happy/sad place’ — that’s what I tried to capture in the piece.”
And with that, he carves out a new niche in his singular aesthetic — and as one of jazz’s most unpredictable and compelling architects, continues to keep listeners guessing.
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Tracklist
- Clouds
- Mimo
- Olha Maria (Antônio Carlos Jobim)
- Repeat After Me
- Birds Ascend
- Lonely One