Chris Mosley
Guitarist/Composer/Producer
Based in Madison via Boston, Portland, and Austin, Chris Mosley is a guitarist/composer/producer who has been writing, recording and performing music for over 20 years. His playing style is rooted in progressive jazz language, with overtones of blues grit, world-folk melodicism, and reverb-soaked spaciousness.
Mosley was raised in Austin, TX and attended Berklee College of Music, where he studied with greats Mick Goodrick, Dave Fiucynski, and Joe Lovano. His wide-ranging work moves through the spaces of modern jazz, folk songwriting, experimental microtonal, psych-rock, soul, and Latin fusion - all connected by the thread of a singular musical sensibility.
'Tribunal' - an instrumental psych-jazz guitar record feat. bassist Damian Erskine and drummer Wayne Salzmann II, is Mosley’s 7th studio album as bandleader. Eight compositions built for exploratory improvisation, the album is a tour of colors, textures, stories and lines. A broad jazz guitar sound is joined by the other-worldly vibes of fretless guitar, microtonal(36edo) guitar and a mini Korg synth, floating atop the effortless grooves of Erskine’s 5-string bass and Salzmann’s kit.
Chris Mosley - Guitarist, Composer, Improvisor, Producer
Full Bio
Chris Mosley grew up outside of Austin, surrounded by the sound of the blues and folk music of Central Texas, and picked up the guitar at age 11. Formative experiences of the Kerrville Folk Festival and Austin-scene song circles provided a context for learning new songs on the fly, while being around the legacy of Stevie Ray Vaughan and in the presence of master players such as Chris Duarte, gave a strong sense of the raw power and potential of transcendental electric guitar wizardry. Attending high school in the Denver area, Mosley turned his focus to the pursuit of learning the language of jazz and benefitted greatly from the mentorship of many established players, including Paul Romaine, Dale Bruning, and Ron Miles.
At 17, Mosley began a two-year stint at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied with jazz guitar luminaries Mick Goodrick, Jon Damian, and Garrison Fewell, had improvisation performance courses with Joe Lovano and Goodrick, and was introduced to the fretless guitar by style(and pitch)-bending guitarist Dave Fiuczynski. Exposed to the possibilities of microtonal music, Mosley began attending a course at New England Conservatory with the visionary saxophonist Joe Maneri, and studying the music of(as well as corresponding with) composer Ezra Sims, both of whom work in 72-tone division of the octave.
In 2005 the 20 yr-old musician moved to Portland, OR, where his subtle and incisive approach to the guitar began to crystallize. While in this vibrant scene, he wrote and produced three albums of contemporary jazz including 2007’s Outside Voices, performed constantly in varied formats, and taught. He also appears prominently on several other records such as Damian Erskine’s So To Speak and Commotion’s Self-Titled. Mosley also contributed to two albums and West Coast tours with avant-garde collective Sound For The Organization of Society, and did tour stints with rising folk-americana singers Heather Masse and Aoife O’Donovan.
In 2009, Mosley moved back to Austin, TX, where he delved into the craft of songwriting and released three more albums of indie/americana/rock with his band Grizzly Adams Family, which placed him in the singer-songwriter role alongside his distinctive lead guitar style. Immersed in the storied music community of Austin, he was also active in the jazz and soul scene, and for five years worked in the Latinomericana band Los Aztex, led by singer Sarah Fox and grammy award-winning squeezebox/keys player, Joel Guzman.
Mosley moved to Madison, WI in the fall of 2022, and began writing what would become Tribunal featuring Damian Erskine on bass and Wayne Salzmann II on Drums. This adventurous blend of textures and sonic thought-seeds is at its core a guitar trio record, but which allows generous detours into the realms of acid jazz, psych rock, Americana, and Eastern lyricism with fretless, acoustic, and microtonal guitars employed along the way. Erskine and Salzmann bring fluid rhythmic mastery to the strange-but-familiar impression of the color weaving guitar work, and the album progresses like a tour from room to imaginative room