Nate Wooley's knknighgh

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Photo credit: Peter Gannushkin

Few modern trumpeters challenge their listeners harder than Nate Wooley, an improvisational jazz artist who has won the hearts of critics in recent years, even earning Downbeat’s coveted Jazz Musician of the Year honors. That flattery hasn’t gone to his head, though. His recent output has been as uncompromising as ever. For this tour, he’s performing with new quartet knknighgh (pronounced “Knife,” somehow), which joins him with three similarly adventurous New York players: alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos, bassist Brandon Lopez and drummer Dre Hocevar. Wooley has written only one very simple composition for the group, though like so much of his work, it lends itself to almost endless exploration.