Bill Cole and Sonny Saul
Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 4:00 PM EDT
About Bill Cole

Bill Cole is an American jazz musician, composer, educator and author. An admired innovator, Cole successfully combines the sounds of untempered instruments with an American art form – jazz. Cole specializes in non-Western wind instruments, especially double reed horns: including Chinese sonas, Korean hojok and piri; Indian nagaswarm and shenai and Tibetan trumpet; as well as the Australian didgeridoo and Ghanaian flute. For 31 years Cole led the Untempered Ensemble, a group he founded in 1992. He has performed with Sam Rivers, Billy Bang, Jayne Cortez, Julius Hemphill, Ornette Coleman, James Blood Ulmer, William Parker, Fred Ho, Gerald Veasley and others; at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Town Hall, Symphony Space and venues around the U.S. and in Europe; and has recorded for Boxholder Records.

About Sonny Saul

The son of a Russian Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother, Sonny Saul was born in 1949 in Atlantic City, New Jersey where he grew up.

Beach, boardwalk, playgrounds, and attending public schools in a rich and diverse American cultural milieu shaped his youth. College, an early marriage, babies, life in Philadelphia, and then a great music teacher, Dennis Sandole, set the tone for what has become a life long involvement with family, music, art, and scholarship.

Now living in Woodstock, Vermont where he runs the famous Pleasant Street Bookstore which he started in 1987, Sonny continues to keep a loose wig.