[Cover photo credit to Michael Barton]

Shawn Maxwell has issued a dozen Jazz albums under his own name. Now, he is releasing Frenetic Domain, taking a different approach and drawing on his early Classical training. It will arrive on March 13, 2026 via Cora Street Records.

Maxwell says:

I know I don’t sound like a typical classical guy anymore. But I still wanted to use those skills. So I thought about some of the classical clarinet showcases I’d played and decided to compose some pieces with sections that had to be played as written, while still leaving room for a good amount of improvisation.

This Jazz-classical hybrid album was also inspired by a 120-year-old manufacturer of reeds for woodwind instruments.

Maxwell serves as an Artist Clinician for Vandoren, the reed and mouthpiece manufacturer. The company sponsors about 50 such artists, in all genres, who “regularly visit schools and colleges to share expertise and performance tips with students of all ages.”

At one of Vandoren’s national clinician meetings, Maxwell met the classical alto saxophonist Chika Inoue. They became friends, leading Maxwell to suggest they should record together, which was “a joke based on the fact that he plays jazz, and she doesn’t improvise at all.”

But Maxwell soon began to take the idea seriously. He believed that in a hybrid of the two genres, “Inoue’s sound and phrasing could lend weight to the composed sections, which would frame and support improvisation from the rest of the group.” Most of the soloing would fall to Maxwell and to pianist and longtime collaborator Mark Nelson.

He says:

I hope people will hear this as something different from most of my other albums.