Jon Dixon

Jon Dixon, a Detroit native, functions as a musician, producer, bandleader, and educator who forges a tangible connection between the city’s historic jazz developments and its electronic music advancements. Esteemed as a keyboardist, live performer, and session player, he has worked with symphony orchestras alongside jazz figures, as well as with various hip-hop and R&B artists. At Michigan State University’s Community Music School he conducts piano instruction, while also directing Timeline and Galaxy 2 Galaxy—both live ensembles tied to the seminal Detroit techno outfit Underground Resistance. In 2015 he launched his own imprint, 4EVR 4WRD, which has since issued multiple solo EPs, among them the 2022 release Coda issued under the alias minorINVENTION.

From childhood Dixon played piano purely by ear. He later pursued formal training in classical piano and jazz at the High School for Fine and Performing Arts before appearing with the Detroit Symphony Civic Jazz Orchestra under the direction of trumpeter Marcus Belgrave. Additional local ensemble work followed, including roles as accompanist and bandleader with Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theater. Early in the 2010s he entered Underground Resistance’s Timeline, making his recorded debut on the collective’s 2011 EP Graystone Ballroom, and he also lent his talents to projects by Talib Kweli, Jessica Care Moore, Goldie, and additional artists. That same year, 2015, Dixon created 4EVR 4WRD specifically to document music that unites jazz traditions with electronic forms; the label’s first offering was Timeline’s Forever Forward EP in 2016, succeeded the next year by his own Fly Free. Planet E then issued Erudition (A Tribute to Marcus Belgrave) in 2018, an EP that included the late trumpeter alongside UR’s Mad Mike Banks, Timeline saxophonist De’Sean Jones, and trumpeter Kris Johnson. Sampa arrived shortly thereafter, while Want It, featuring Amp Fiddler and Dames Brown, surfaced in 2019. Throughout the early 2020s Dixon maintained a steady flow of EPs, among them Detroit Get Down—which includes a guest spot by Moodymann—and further minorINVENTION material such as the 2022 set Coda.