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Joan Hutton

Joan Hutton is a woodwind performer, composer and music educator residing in Minneapolis and hailing from Toronto, Canada. Her varied musical interests have led her over the years to classical, jazz, funk, free improvisation, pit orchestras and more. She is a long time member of the Ancia Saxophone Quartet, with recordings on the Naxos and Albany labels. In 2022 she released her first jazz album as a leader, along with saxophonist Sue Orfield, on Shifting Paradigm Records. Their second album is due for release in July 2024. Joan is the saxophone instructor at Augsburg University and has a large private studio of clarinet and saxophone students.

Joan Hutton / Sue Orfield: Splash

by Jerome Wilson
August 14, 2024

Alto saxophonist Joan Hutton and tenor saxophonist Sue Orfield co-lead a quintet out of the US Midwest called Take That Back. The band's distinctive sound rises out of the rich dialogue between their two leaders. They flow, stomp and roll through a program of mostly original music with high spirits and style. “Splash" and “Playhouse Bats" work through lively New Orleans funk grooves and “#sixfeet" sounds like a Second Line variation on John Coltrane's “Giant Steps." “Atari Afternoon" ...

Album Review

Joan Hutton & Sue Orfield: Take That Back

Read "Take That Back" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 27, 2022

Joan Hutton and Sue Orfield's Take that Back opens with the smooth dark chocolate crooning of Hutton's bass clarinet. The tune is “Dirty Secret," a Hutton-penned, mid-tempo gem. And initially what comes to mind is (Bennie Maupin and Eric Dolphy aside) how rarely we hear the bass clarinet on a jazz album. Then Orfield's tenor sax enters and interweaves lines with Hutton's, and the pairing of sounds presented with the two reeds and the piano, bass and drums rhythm team ...

“The arresting contrast between Orfield’s bustle-and-croon tenor sax style and Hutton’s more incisive textures on bass clarinet and alto sax…is a credit to their chemistry and composing.” —Britt Robson (City Pages)