The long-awaited debut album from bassist-composer Thomas Morgan is a lush, layered journey through ambient textures and open improvisation. Featuring an all-star cast—Bill Frisell, Craig Taborn, Ambrose Akinmusire, Immanuel Wilkins, Henry Threadgill, Dan Weiss, and Gerald Cleaver—the record is both spacious and intricate, with Morgan’s own virtual instrument “WOODS” shaping its organic feel. The inclusion of poet Gary Snyder’s voice adds another dimension to this environmental soundscape. Around You Is A Forest is co-produced by David Breskin and Jakob Bro and represents a bold statement from one of jazz’s most revered collaborators stepping fully into the spotlight.
Thomas Morgan: Around You Is A Forest
Loveland Music (LLM029)
Release date: November 7, 2025
Pre-save: https://lnk.to/
About:
For more than two decades, bassist Thomas Morgan has been a quiet but vital presence in contemporary jazz. Known for his lyrical sound, grounding intuition, and deep responsiveness, Morgan has played alongside masters such as Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Jakob Bro, Steve Coleman, John Abercrombie, Masabumi Kikuchi, Craig Taborn, and Joey Baron. Morgan has become a trusted bedrock for multiple generations of improvisers for the rare sensitivity he brings to every setting. Until now, he has never stepped forward with a project under his own name.
His debut album, Around You Is a Forest (Loveland Music), reveals a dimension of Morgan’s artistry long hidden from public view: his lifelong engagement with computers, programming, and hacker culture. The record is built around WOODS, a virtual string instrument Morgan designed in SuperCollider, an open-source software environment for real-time audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. WOODS evokes the sound of plucked and struck string instruments — West African lute-harps, Asian zithers, the Hungarian cimbalom, marimbas — while operating according to generative code that Morgan shaped into a living, evolving instrument.
Each track features a duet between WOODS and one of today’s most inventive musicians: Dan Weiss (tabla), Craig Taborn (keyboards, field recordings), Gerald Cleaver (drums), Henry Threadgill (flutes), Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Bill Frisell (guitars), Immanuel Wilkins (alto saxophone), and Gary Snyder (voice).
Morgan’s early experiences with programming began in childhood in Hayward, California. His father, a computer science professor, introduced him to games like Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and Myst — and then taught him how to “look under the hood.” “When I asked him, he showed me how to edit a SimCity file in hexadecimal to increase city funds,” Morgan recalls. “Understanding how things were actually working opened up another world altogether.”
By high school, he was writing code and experimenting with Unix systems. He was drawn to the flexibility of open-source environments and the curiosity-driven ethos of the free software movement. At the same time, he was falling in love with jazz, captivated by the playing of Ray Brown and the community of improvisers who embraced freedom, structure, and listening. The two worlds never felt far apart. “Jazz musicians are music hackers,” he says. “Both are about curiosity, about discovering something in the moment and applying it immediately.”
While Morgan doesn’t typically identify as a programmer, he describes occasional deep dives into creative coding — episodes of sustained exploration that mirror his approach to music. “Most of the time what I do is tinkering,” he says. “But sometimes, like with this project, I’ll disappear into it for weeks or months.
Although Morgan chose the path of a professional bassist, his explorations in programming continued quietly for years. At Manhattan School of Music, he was already writing a custom MIDI assembler. In 2012, he discovered Overtone (a Lisp-based interface for SuperCollider), which reignited his interest in algorithmic music. By 2014, he was composing with these tools during residency — and eventually built WOODS, first out of curiosity, then as a central instrument in a growing body of work.
He recorded initial WOODS tracks in 2016 in his apartment, imagining future collaborations, but the project was set aside as his performance career intensified. Only during the forced stillness of the pandemic did he return to it with renewed focus.
That process was supported by a grant which gave Morgan the time and resources to complete the project. He invited producer David Breskin — known for his visionary work with Bill Frisell, Kris Davis, and Nels Cline — to help shape the album. Breskin encouraged Morgan to structure the music as a series of duets, and helped match WOODS pieces with specific collaborators. Throughout the recording and editing, he served as both advisor and provocateur, helping Morgan refine his vision.
The album’s title comes from both a classic text adventure game (Adventure) and a metaphor for artistic community. “A forest is a place where nutrients and information are shared through root systems,” Morgan says. “In that sense, the musicians on this album are some of the trees that teach and nourish me.”
The metaphor also captures the nature of WOODS itself. Its sonic palette is cohesive, like the repeating forms of bark and leaves, yet within that texture lies constant variation: shifting rhythmic emphases, subtle changes in timbre, and evolving harmonies. Against this backdrop, Morgan’s collaborators bring their own voices into the environment, improvising in dialogue with a living ecosystem.
The album’s artwork deepens this concept. Created in collaboration with Tal R, a leading visual artist in Denmark, the visuals reflect the interconnected spirit of the music. The word “ASSEMBLY,” rendered in a mechanistic, all-caps lettering, evokes both assembly-language coding and the intricate structure of a digital instrument. Meanwhile, the mirrored trees on the cover — some of which resemble jet planes — echo the forest metaphor and invoke the layered elegance of Monk or Motian. “There’s a childlike sophistication to the design,” Morgan notes. “And the use of color is unified, with accents — just like WOODS.”
For an artist known for his subtlety and self-effacement, Around You is a strikingly personal statement. It brings to light a creative life long lived in parallel to Morgan’s role as a bassist. The album also marks a new chapter in Morgan’s ongoing collaborative relationship with Jakob Bro, whose label, Loveland Music, is releasing the album on CD, vinyl, download and streaming formats. Their shared musical language, developed over numerous recordings and tours, deepens their artistic intertwining.
Morgan sees the album not as a departure from his identity as a bassist, but as an expansion of it. Around You Is a Forest affirms that code and sound, structure and spontaneity, can coexist — and that improvisation, whether in music or programming, remains one of the most powerful tools for discovery we have.
Credits:
Recorded October 14, 2024 (tracks 1, 2, 7), by Philip Weinrobe at Figure 8 Recording with assistant engineer Tyler Hicks; August 30, 2024 (track 4), by David Luke at Opus Studios; April 14, 2024 (track 5) and November 26, 2024 (track 8), by Michael Coleman at Figure 8 Recording; and October 30, 2024 (track 6), by Adam Muñoz at Opus Studios
Produced by David Breskin, Thomas Morgan and Jakob Bro.
Edited by Nate Mendelsohn, Joseph Branciforte, Emi Makabe and Thomas Morgan
Mixed by Joseph Branciforte at Greyfade Studio
Mastered by David Elberling at the Village Studio B
Artwork: Tal R
Cover design: Claus Due Studio
Ambrose Akinmusire appears courtesy of Nonesuch Records
Bill Frisell appears courtesy of Blue Note Records
Immanuel Wilkins appears courtesy of Blue Note Records
Audio recording of Gary Snyder courtesy of NPR
Gary Snyder, “Here” from This Present Moment: New Poems. Copyright (C) 2012 by Gary Snyder. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Counterpoint Press, counterpointpress.com
Thanks to Emi Makabe, David Breskin, Jakob Bro, Loveland Music, Bill Frisell, Gary Snyder, Henry Threadgill, Gerald Cleaver, Craig Taborn, Dan Weiss, Ambrose Akinmusire, Immanuel Wilkins, Ethan Iverson, Shuja Haider, Betto Arcos, Toshie Makabe, Christopher Morgan and Carol Morgan
This album was made possible by the generous support of The Shifting Foundation
Supported by The Danish Arts Foundation & KODA