Anna Webber is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her new album, simpletrio2000, is an exploration of polyrhythm and a celebration of a decade of working with her band Simple Trio. Featuring Matt Mitchell on piano and John Hollenbeck on drums, simpletrio2000 is the group’s fourth album, and a follow-up to the critically-acclaimed release Idiom, which earned Webber the accolade of being named the top composer of the year by JazzTimes in 2021. Her music has been called “visionary and captivating,” (Wall Street Journal), and “heady music [that] appeals to the rest of the body” (NPR). In 2024 alone, she received the Herb Albert Award in the Arts, a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission, and was voted top of both the tenor saxophone and flute “Rising Star” categories in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll.
Webber is a Berlin Prize Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She has additionally been honored with the Margaret Whitton Award (administered by the Jazz Gallery); grants from the Copland Fund, the Shifting Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts; and residencies from Exploring the Metropolis, MacDowell, and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts.