2025 Bill Evans Jazz Festival Guest Artist

Erik Jekabson is a freelance composer, arranger, trumpet player and educator who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He is equally busy composing, arranging and playing for different bands, leading his own groups, teaching a wide variety of students and running the Young Musicians Program at the California Jazz Conservatory Jazzschool in Berkeley.

As an arranger and composer, he’s arranged for symphony orchestras (the San Francisco Symphony, the BBC Radio Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the Coltrane: Legacy for Orchestra Project) vocalists (Madeleine Peyroux, Ani DiFranco, Jane Krakowski, Jackie Ryan, Kenny Washington, Madeline Eastman) and jazz ensembles; The Daggerboard- Erik Jekabson Orchestra, the Erik Jekabson String-tet, and his own Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, a 17 piece big band which holds a monthly residency at the Jazzschool in Berkeley. 

As a trumpet player, he’s spent time on the road with John Mayer, Galactic and Illinois Jacquet, and has performed and recorded with other notable musicians such as Taj Mahal, Maceo Parker, Boz Skaggs and Kermit Ruffins.  He has released eight albums under his own name (including four on his own record label, Jekab’s Music), and produced three records with the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra.