Noah Garabedian

Quartets and Solos
Release Date: September 19, 2025
Label: Contagious Music

Quartets and Solos, the latest album from master bassist, composer, and educator Noah Garabedian, captures the full arc of his artistry, spotlighting an expressive range as both bandleader and solo composer. He’s joined by a deeply attuned cast of collaborators: Dayna Stephens on tenor saxophone and EWI, Carmen Staaf on piano, Jimmy Macbride on drums, and Samuel Adams, in the role of producer (and composer of the track “To Speak Or Sing Softly”).

“Throughout my life he has been a mentor, a teacher, a source of inspiration, a colleague, and a friend,” Garabedian says of Stephens, who he met when the saxophonist was his camp counselor at Feather River Jazz Camp in the Bay Area. “When I think of Dayna playing saxophone, I think of patience; he is the king of using silence musically and developing motifs.”

Garabedian met Staaf at the Stanford Jazz Workshop in 2015, and praises her for a special touch at the piano: “She makes every instrument sing expressively.” He singles out her comping in particular: “She makes everything work, no matter what happens musically. In the deepest and most dense chaos, she makes sense of everything."

He goes back even further with Macbride and Adams: he met the former at a Juilliard rehearsal in 2012, and they’ve toured across the globe since then. Garabedian grew up with Adams in Berkeley, and they’ve remained friends for two decades: “Samuel is such a curious and open person, always seeking to learn, listen, and converse. Although he has a clear unique voice as a composer, I love that I can hear many different influences in his compositions, and he constantly inspires me to push myself.

Together, they explore a vivid, shape-shifting soundscape that moves fluidly between intricate group interplay and solitary reflection.

Garabedian’s music wrestles with the tension and harmony between solitude and community — a push and pull at the core of his creative philosophy. “Community and socialization are essential ingredients to music, especially improvised music,” he says. “But as I have grown older, I have learned how to celebrate and cherish being alone; how to find comfort in being by yourself.”

That balance fuels his work on Quartets and Solos. “Artistic creation doesn’t just appear out of nowhere — it comes from a deep fountain that is replenished and fed by the community that teaches you, nourishes you, and holds you,” he says. “But artistic creation is also done through your own will power... it’s about frequency and the continued drive for creation, evolution, and production.”

The album lives in that push and pull. It opens up space for expansive quartet dialogue and tightens focus for distilled, one-on-one meditations — a vivid portrait of an artist drawing power from both collective momentum and personal clarity.

As the title suggests, the record splits between two modes. Eight tracks feature the full quartet (“Welcome Home,” “Fast Slow,” “Late Stage Epiphany,” “To Speak or Sing Softly,” “Casual Friday,” “The Mayor of Malibu,” “The Hawk,” and “Dogwood”), each a conceptually standalone statement. “The variety in the quartet compositions shows the broad range of styles, interests, and sounds that I enjoy and have digested throughout the years,” Garabedian says. “A hint of it all can be found in those songs.”

Those fuller statements are counterbalanced by a series of sharply focused solo features: Staaf on “The Most Beautiful One,” Macbride on “Snap Pop,” Stephens on “To Swim Below,” and Garabedian himself on “To Dance Underground.”

“The solo compositions are very intentional and connected, and each one was written for that specific musician,” Garabedian explains. “Dayna, Carmen, and Jimmy are all fantastic musicians, but with the solo pieces I tried to capture unique aspects of each of their playing — lean into what makes them special. The solo pieces can be thought of as appetizers to an entrée. Still delicious — just slightly smaller and less dense.”

One interlude, “To Remain Alive,” captures a stripped-down moment with Garabedian, Staaf, and Macbride — excerpted from a live performance, recorded casually on Garabedian’s phone. It’s just another facet in Quartets and Solos’ unique aesthetic, interwoven with Adams’ electronic atmospheres.

“Every song has some additional sound design or production on it, particularly the solo pieces,” Garabedian Because of the production, and the type of compositions, my album doesn’t sound like most modern jazz albums. In adding production, I really wanted to emphasize certain moments in the compositions, solos, or bring out specific qualities in an instrument.”

“I’ve learned so much from Samuel, Dayna, Carmen, and Jimmy — and I feel pure joy when we get to perform and create together,” Garabedian reflects. “We’ve known each other a long time, and I treasure the musical and personal bonds we’ve built.” As both a document of that friendship and a singular listening experience, Quartets and Solos is a triumph.