The story

Black Diamond thrives on the chemistry and compositions of saxophonists Artie Black and Hunter Diamond. They met while studying under David Baker and Tom Walsh at Indiana University.  A mutual admiration for the collaborative recordings of saxophonists Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh led them to experiment with their own two-tenor palette, and it quickly became apparent that the variance in their tonal and artistic approaches created a captivating sense of balance. 

In Chicago, the band has been featured in residency at Andy's Jazz Club, The Drake Hotel, and The Whistler. Other performances include the 2018 Chicago Jazz Festival, and associations with the Jazz Institute of Chicago, Sounds of the City Workshop, the Anagram Series at Elastic Arts Foundation, and the Chicago Jazz Composers Collective. The band has been on three U.S. tours and will make their EU debut at the 2024 We Jazz festival in Helsinki, Finland. As active music educators, the group has been featured as guest clinicians and lecturers of jazz and ethnomusicology at Slippery Rock University (Slippery Rock, PA), Whitworth University(Spokane, WA), Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA), and Knox College (Galesburg, IL).

2017 marked the release of Black Diamond's debut recording , "Mandala," on Shifting Paradigm Records. Featuring bassist Matt Ulery and drummer Neil Hemphill, the album debuted nine original works by Black and Diamond. The title is inspired by the Vajrayana Buddhist practice of sand painting. The intent of a mandala is to form a representation of the enlightened mind through intricate patterning of layered grains of colored sand. The music on "Mandala" represents their grains laid; their mandala composed. "Mandala" was listed as an editor's pick in Downbeat magazine in August 2017. 

Black Diamond's second album, “Chant” (Shifting Paradigm), was recorded live at The Whistler in Chicago and released in March 2019. This recording built on the momentum of "Mandala" and further crystalized the band's sound.  The nature of the live recording leads to a heightened level of energy and collective improvisation.  In praise of "Chant," the Chicago Reader describes Black Diamond's ability "...to affirm the importance of discovering the commonalities between mediums that are bound by creativity and growth."

"A Held Space" (Woolgathering Records, 2020) features Black and Diamond in a series of improvisational duets whose raw material was edited and produced to create a collage that represents their longstanding chemistry. Jazz Journal UK wrote that "Black and Diamond’s augmenting of their in-the-moment work stops short of straightforward overdubbing and has the effect of deepening their spontaneity and the acute degree to which they are a meeting of musical minds."

“Furniture Of the Mind Rearranging” (We Jazz Records, 2024) is an assemblage of new compositions and improvisations that develop the band's established sound and exemplify the way in which this band folds into the Chicago creative music community. The quartet traverses their familiar aesthetic ranges between driving off-kilter groove, plaintive minimalism, and intimate chamber music, with the ever-present spirit of small-group jazz and a hovering influence of Chicago’s improvised music culture. And while this collection represents three previous albums and more than a decade of close kinship and artistic evolution between co-leaders Black and Diamond, neither are too precious about any one element on the album. This is very simply the latest work in what continues to be an expanding body work founded on a guiding principle: cultivation without expectation.

Feature 1

The Band

Interview