In Situ - Release Tour

Alexa Torres is a Latinx improvising violinist with a background in jazz. She is a
performer, band leader, and ethnographic music researcher based in New York City and Austin,
Texas. Torres views her ethnographic and performance practices as reciprocal. Musically, she
seeks to cultivate improvisational and compositional styles which are both historically and
personally rooted, embodying a dialogue between tradition and innovation in modern improvised
music. Throughout her musical career, Torres has performed in the US, Latin America, and
Europe and has had the privilege of sharing the stage with renowned, Grammy-winning artists
such as Kurt Elling and Mon Laferte. Breaking new ground in the world of improvised strings, in
2022 Torres became the first woman and the first violinist to graduate from the University of
North Texas (UNT) Jazz Strings program when she obtained a Master of Music in Jazz
Performance from the acclaimed Jazz Studies department. In Situ, Torres’s debut album as a
band leader will be available on major streaming platforms on June 14th .

The release of In Situ is supported by the Austin Live Music Grant and Torres will
perform a series of multi-sited album release concerts with the Alexa Torres Quartet
throughout Austin and New York City. The archaeological term in situ evokes a sense of
rediscovery and temporal connection, reflected musically through the textures, improvisational
languages, and timbres of the album. With a blended acoustic-electric violin sound, Torres’s be-
bop lines intertwined with modern diminished and altered vocabulary float over guitarist
Wellmann’s bright, distinctly contemporary voicings. Further mirroring the Alexa Torres
Quartet's goal of bridging past, present, and future, In Situ brings together original compositions
as well as contemporary arrangements of jazz standards. The compositions foreground
contemplative melodies, rich harmonic textures, and atypical forms. The arrangements reflect an
intimate engagement with jazz idioms and Torres’s own Latinx heritage by synthesizing Latinx
rhythms, modern jazz devices, and improvisation. Weaving an aural landscape that is both
personally and historically grounded, In Situ sculpts a sonic bridge between the past and the
present, between tradition and innovation, and between musical idioms and cultures.