ADAM O’FARRIL’S ELEPHANT
ADAM O’FARRILL INTRODUCES NEW QUARTET, ELEPHANT, WITH SELF-TITLED DEBUT
Acclaimed trumpeter-composer blends postbop, electronic music, minimalism, Ryuichi Sakamoto and more at the helm of a new band featuring pianist Yvonne Rogers, bassist Walter Stinson and drummer Russell Holzman
Album to be Released March 20, 2026 via Out of Your Head Records on CD, LP, Hi-Res Download & Streaming
It’s hard to believe that the trumpeter and composer Adam O’Farrill could be intimidated by any musical situation. After all, this is an artist who ranks, per the New York Times, “among the leading trumpeters in jazz,” and “is perhaps the music’s next major improviser.” He’s a musician of staggering technique and even deeper emotional and cultural insight, and the jazz community has noticed.
At 31, O’Farrill has earned the respect of his peers and elders alike, not to mention music-school hopefuls who transcribe him alongside bop-era greats. The name Adam O’Farrill on a record signifies many things, among them integrity, continually surprising ideas and sheer musical excellence. In 2025 alone, O’Farrill was integral to acclaimed recordings including guitarist Mary Halvorson’s About Ghosts, keyboard dynamo Hiromi’s Out There, drummer-composer Tarun Balani’s Kadahin Milandaasin and his own octet project, For These Streets, featuring Halvorson, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan and other luminaries. His c.v. boasts collaborations with some of the most critically lauded musicians of the 21st century: Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, Mulatu Astatke, Mali Obomsawin, Micah Thomas and more. Still, when it came to fronting a quartet as the lone horn, O’Farrill was compelled to wait. “I just felt like I wasn’t really ready as a trumpet player,” he says, “but I also didn’t feel spiritually, mentally and creatively confident enough. Because when you’re with another horn player, you have backup.” Indeed, in groups like his Stranger Days, O’Farrill set the highest possible standard for frontline chemistry, supporting and sparring with a saxophonist in ways that suggested a kind of clairvoyance.
So what changed? Why is now the time to embrace a new format? To start, O’Farrill gained crucial experience in the studio and on the road with Hiromi’s quartet Sonicwonder, traversing her hyperkinetic, genre-blurring music as the sole horn voice. He also found the ideal collaborators for this new venture, named ELEPHANT for no other reason than O’Farrill really likes the animal and “needed to call the group something,” he chuckles. Along with O’Farrill, ELEPHANT features three rising New York-based artists who will undoubtedly shape the state of improvised music in the decades ahead. They include the pianist Yvonne Rogers, the bassist Walter Stinson and the drummer Russell Holzman. O’Farrill speaks of his new band with breathless admiration, both musically and personally. Rogers is a masterful, learned player — and a daring one. “She’s like a great painter who’s not afraid to drip in a place she didn’t intend to,” says O’Farrill, who is the son of
two pianists: the Latin-jazz titan Arturo O’Farrill and the classical pianist and educator Alison Deane. “Yvonne has a lot of intent, of course, but there are these moments that feel so authentically spontaneous.”
“Walter,” O’Farrill continues, “that’s my guy, you know?” For well over a decade, the trumpeter has come to rely on Stinson’s ability to balance the fundamentals of sturdy, consummate bass playing with musicianship that is “so expressive and playful and elastic.”
O’Farrill and Holzman were pals at New York’s prestigious LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and then went on to become two of the most revered young players on their instruments. Holzman, who has developed a massive following in the online drum community, is “without a doubt one of the greatest drummers I’ve ever played with,” O’Farrill says. “He has a deep technical mastery, but at the root of it all, he’s one hell of an improviser.” Certainly, ELEPHANT wouldn’t click without Holzman’s seamless melding of natural swing and high-precision electronic-rooted rhythms; what’s more, his nuanced, self-aware approach to volume fits the controlled intensity of the band to a T.
“I hit the goldmine with this band,” says O’Farrill. “Also, everybody’s cool, everybody’s funny. That’s very important.”
“I consider this band the closest I’ll probably get to fronting a rock band,” he adds later with a laugh.
For a talented young jazz musician in the 21st century, that might seem like a familiar ambition — but this is Adam O’Farrill, whose thirst for art of all disciplines is boundless. His idea of a rock frontman is the visionary Thom Yorke — he loves Radiohead as well as the “shaggy mystery” of Yorke’s solo music — and the cultural influences that figure into ELEPHANT range far and wide. They include Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s film scores, Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, classical minimalism, electronic dance music, the work of novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, and much more. Remarkably, ELEPHANT is able to internalize contemporary influences in a way that never feels contrived in a “crossover jazz” kind of way. O’Farrill and his collaborators are simply expressing themselves and their intellectual passions, and the results are stunning.
The Sea Triptych could be considered the album’s centerpiece — three performances that collectively reflect both the comforts and enigmas of water. The opening “Along the Malecon” is equally gorgeous and askew, ending with rhythmic and textural explosions that evoke the waves crashing against the titular Havana seawall. “The Three of Us, Floating” is an ambient meditation in which minimalism supports O’Farrill’s thoughtful, cryptic improvisations. Says O’Farrill, “The gently repeating piano represents the constancy of water, the bass its weight and vibrancy, and the trumpet flits around like a sea creature.”
“Iris Murdoch,” the triptych’s closer, “is a percussive and rollicking jaunt,” O’Farrill says, “evoking the psychological darkness and playfulness of the author” — whose greatest works include the 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea. Musically, that translates to a taut, dense rhythmic form that grooves nonetheless, on top of which O’Farrill and Rogers play unison through the hard angles of the melody before playing off one another. Like much of ELEPHANT, it proves that chest-rattling intensity doesn’t require high volume.
Throughout the album, O’Farrill pursues an ideal of aesthetic balance — those “gray spaces,” he says, “between minimalism and maximalism, and between very dense harmony and beautifully clear, simple harmony.” “Herkimer Diamond” is a prime example of this pursuit, and of O’Farrill’s ingenuity as an arranger. Above Holzman’s simmering drum-and-bass-tinged groove, O’Farrill draws cagey muted lines that give way to diamond-sharp interplay between Rogers and Stinson. As the track draws toward its end, the melody finally emerges in its full form and shape, via a clarion blend of echoed trumpet and synthesizer.
A take on Sakamoto’s haunting masterwork “Bibo No Aozora” cleverly swaps the strings of the Japanese icon’s arrangement with O’Farrill’s trumpet, awash in delay and electronic harmony. (Still, the exquisite brassiness of the instrument remains. “At the end of the day, I never want the trumpet to disappear into the effects,” he says.) Additional savvy reinventions follow: an electronica-influenced beat gives the melancholy composition an edge of anxiety; the melody moves from piano to bass to screaming trumpet; and the tune tumbles toward spirited improvisation, among the whole band and then between drums and piano.
Sakamoto “had so many phases,” O’Farrill marvels, going on to outline each of the eras in the composer’s career, from Yellow Magic Orchestra through his final solo albums. “He took a lot of musical conventions, formal and melodic, and flipped them on their heads,” O’Farrill says. “He used familiar-sounding elements to create something very unexpected. That was, and is, a guiding force for me with this album — in fact, for any music I write.”
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