Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Fonda was born on December 16, 1954 in Amsterdam, New York to parents who both played jazz. He played guitar in his youth but switched to bass guitar later on. He studied bass at Berklee College of Music, where he also began playing upright bass.

In the early 1980s he played in the New Haven, Connecticut area and recorded with Wadada Leo Smith. Fonda explored dance and its relationship to jazz music, playing bass with a dance company in the 1980s and incorporating a tap dancer into his ensemble for the albums From the Source and The Healing.

1994 began his playing with Anthony Braxton, collaborating with him extensively for the next five years and recording fifteen albums. He and Michael Jefry Stevens co-lead an ensemble, the Fonda-Stevens group, that began in 1991. The group has recorded ten sessions and continues to perform extensively in Europe and the United States.

Bassist Joe Fonda has recorded seventeen albums as a bandleader and continues to record, perform and explore free jazz.

More Posts: bass