Chris Combs (composer)
| Chris Combs | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Christopher Kyle Combs |
| Born |
October 12, 1983 Tulsa, Oklahoma, US |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, arranger, steel guitarist, guitarist, producer |
| Instruments | Guitar, lap steel, steel guitar |
| Website | www |
Chris Combs is a composer, arranger, steel guitarist, and producer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has been a part of the jazz group Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey since 2008. Combs also writes and plays lap steel with Gogo Plumbay, a Tulsa-based quintet that has been together since 2009. Combs records frequently with many artists working in a variety of capacities and can be found on releases from Kinnara Records, Royal Potato Family, Horton Records, and Scissortail Records.
In 2010, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey's reinterpretations of Beethoven's 3rd & 6th Symphonies premiered in June as a project entitled 'Ludwig'. The project found Combs playing lap steel on rearrangements of Beethoven's 3rd & 6th symphonies alongside a 50 piece orchestra on June 12 as a headline performance at the OK Mozart Festival. A feat never accomplished before on steel guitar. Down Beat called Ludwig "a tour de force of jazz melded with classical."
In January 2011 JFJO recorded a suite of music based on the Tulsa Race Riot. For its 21st album, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey reached into the dark annals of its hometown’s history and emerged with a masterwork: The Race Riot Suite. Written, arranged and orchestrated by Chris Combs, the album is a long-form conceptual piece that tells the devastating story of the 1921 Tulsa race riot—a real estate-driven ethnocide occurring under the guise of citizen-dispensed justice.
The oil-elite, civic government and local press colluded to take advantage of a racially tense climate in Jim Crow-era Oklahoma, resulting in the death of hundreds of black Tulsans and the destruction of an entire city district. "The adventurous jazz band's latest project pays tribute to Tulsa's Greenwood community, destroyed in a 1921 race riot, while evoking the creative output of 1920s Oklahoma…the score captures the energy of Greenwood's fervent churchgoers and the rollicking territory dance bands that crisscrossed the Southwest." says the Los Angeles Times
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