Spencer Zahn

New York-based musician and composer Spencer Zahn crafts expansive, genre-blending soundscapes that fuse chamber jazz, folk, ambient textures, and contemporary classical elements. His primarily instrumental output spans introspective solo piano pieces alongside group-oriented works that highlight collective interplay and shared creativity. Long active as a session player and road musician, he launched his solo path with the synth-driven experimental release People of the Dawn in 2018. The 2020 full-band project Sunday Painter marked his debut fronting an ensemble, while multiple collaborations with Dave Harrington also emerged during this period. The widely praised albums Pigments and Quiet in a World Full of Noise, both featuring vocalist Dawn Richard, appeared on Merge in 2022 and 2024 respectively, with the two-part Statues—divided into piano and electronic halves—issued in between.

Massachusetts native Spencer Zahn began playing bass guitar at age twelve and later established himself as a skilled jazz bassist. Relocating to New York in the mid-2000s, he secured steady touring work before initiating a solo career in 2015 through partnerships with Dave Harrington centered on instrumental composition. This led to a pair of early solo outings on Double Denim Records: the synth-centric, jazz-tinged People of the Dawn in 2018 and When We Were Brand New the following year. He cultivated an extensive network of collaborators, documented on the 2020 Cascine releases Tura Lura (with Harrington and Jeremy Gustin) and the Keith Jarrett– and ECM-inspired Sunday Painter. Additional activity included the live improvisation First Flight on Algorithm Free, recorded with Chris Forsyth, Harrington, and Ryan Jewell, followed by its 2021 dub version, First Flight Redux.

Further 2022 projects comprised the solo Pale Horizon and the Merge-issued Pigments with Dawn Richard, the latter earning strong critical notice. In 2023 Zahn joined Harrington and Gustin to reinterpret Harry Styles’ Grammy-winning Harry’s House as the instrumental jazz album A Visit to Harry’s House. He then issued the solo piano collection Statues I, which includes a reading of Carla Bley’s “Lawns,” alongside the experimental electronic set Statues II, later combined as the gatefold double-LP Statues. A second partnership with Richard yielded the 2024 Merge release Quiet in a World Full of Noise, a reflective work shaped by grief and solace that originated from Zahn’s piano sketches.