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Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane's OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the '70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.

Between 1975 and 1986 he was active on the Boston creative music scene as a performer and concert and music community organizer. He composed music for his first trio in 1977. In 1980 he traveled to Europe where he performed in Belgium and Holland. When he returned to Boston he co-founded the Boston Improvisers Group (BIG). Over the next few years through various configurations BIG produced two festivals and many concerts. In 1981 he formed his own record company, Riti, and recorded his first Lp Wraparound with a trio featuring Sebastian Steinberg on bass and Laurence Cook on drums. Also in 1981 he began what would be a six year collaboration with the multi-instrumentalist Lowell Davidson performing with him in a trio and duo. Between 1986 and 1989 he lived in New York City where he performed at the Shuttle Theater, Club Chandelier, Visiones, Inroads, Greenwich House, etc. as well as performing with his trio at the first festival Tea and Comprovisation held at the Knitting Factory. In 1989 he returned to Boston where he lived until 2001. In 1994 he became the first guitarist to lead his own session in the twenty year history of Black Saint/Soul Note Records with the trio recording Symbolic Gesture. In 2000 he began playing upright bass and in 2001 he returned to the New Haven, Connecticut area.

He has performed or recorded with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, David S. Ware, Sunny Murray, Marshall Allen, Dewey Redman, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Andrew CyrilleJoe Maneri, Barry Guy, Tyshawn Sorey, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Han Bennink, Barre Phillips, Tomeka Reid, Paul Rutherford, Agustí Fernández, Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Gerald Cleaver, Rob Brown, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, DKV Trio, Aaly Trio, Daniel Carter, Rashid Bakr, Wilbur Morris,, Kidd Jordan, Alvin Fielder, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Tim Berne, Fred Anderson, Ivo Perelman, Andrea Parkins, Hamid Drake, Thurman Barker, Fred Hopkins, Bern Nix, Joe McPhee, Billy Bang, Lowell Davidson, Peter Kowald, Simon Fell, Roy Campbell Jr., Raphé Malik, Whit Dickey, Sabir Mateen, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Warren Smith, Karen Borca, Malcolm Goldstein, Paul Lytton, Tim Berne, Suzie Ibarra, Mat Maneri, Sylvia Courvosier, Thurston Moore, Alex Ward, Jamie Saft and many others. He has also performed as a member of William Parker’s Organic Ensemble, Pipeline 2000, Jim Hobbs Ghost Band, Alan Silva’s Celestial Communications Orchestra, Simon Fell Orchestra, Agustí Fernández Celebration Ensemble, and in a large ensemble led by Leroy Jenkins. He currently leads various groups including Abstract Forest, a 20+ piece improvising ensemble, Go Go Mambo, Joe Morris Quartet, Mess Hall, Shock Axis, Plymouth, as well as performing solo, in duos and as a freelance guitarist and double bassist. In 2019 he began his INSTANTIATION music, recording and performing the first four parts of the multi-part work that uses the properties of free music in new ways with various ensembles.

He is featured as leader, co-leader and sideman on 150 recordings to date. Many of his recordings as a leader have been named among Writer’s Choice (best of the year) in the Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, Wire, Coda, and Jazziz, and on Free Jazz.org and All About Jazz.com.. He has recorded for the labels AUM Fidelity, SoulNote, Thirsty Ear, Ayler, Knitting Factory, Okka Disc, OmniTone, Avant, Incus, Hat Hut, ECM, Leo, Homestead, NoMore, About Time, Clean Feed, Skycap, Rogue Art, Rare Noise, ESPdisk, Bug Incision, Relative Pitch, and Cuneiform. In 2014 he founded Glacial Erratic records.

In 2019 he was nominated for a St Botolph Distinguished Artist Award. He received the 2017 Killam Visiting Scholar Award from the University of Calgary Alberta Canada. He was the recipient of a Meet the Composer grant in 2004. He was nominated for a 2001 Calarts Alpert Award. He was nominated as New York Jazz Awards Guitarist of the Year in 1998 and 2002.

In 2012 he published the book Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti, 2012). His article Encryption was included in Arcane vol 7 (Tzadik 2014). His article Perpetual Frontier appears on www.pointofdeparture.org (Pod39) May 2012. He has written numerous liner note articles on his music and for other artists for recordings on the labels Sony, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, RogueArt and others. His monthly column Intentional Evolution begins publication in the German magazine Jazz Podium in January 2020. He has presented workshops and master classes in a wide variety of settings throughout North America and Europe, including at Harvard University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, University of the Arts, Berklee College of Music, University of Calgary, University of Guelph, University of Alberta, and Mannes School of Music. He has taught improvisation and/or guitar on the faculty at Tufts University Experimental College, Southern Connecticut State University and the Longy School of Music at Bard College. He is a lesson faculty member at New School Jazz and Contemporary Music. He has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory of Music since 2000.

He began his work as an organizer and performance producer/curator in 1976 in Boston and continued there and in New York until 2001 when he left Boston for New Haven CT. Upon moving to Connecticut in 2001 he created the Just Play series in New Haven (2003/2004), curated the premier season at Firehouse 12 (2005), was artistic director for Hartford Jazz Society Jazz in the Park series (2008), co-founded and curated the Improvisations series at Real Art Ways in Hartford (2011–2016), and founded and co-curated the Multiplex series at State House in New Haven (2019). He was in residence at The Stone NYC for two weeks in January 2013, and for one week in June 2014, August 2016, June 2017 and May 2018. In September 2015 through June 2016, he produced the series Arcade which presented him in performance with new emerging musicians with ten performances presented in New Haven, Hartford, Cambridge, Mass., and Brooklyn, N.Y. His one-day festival Spectacle was presented at Real Art Ways in Hartford CT annually from 2013-2018. It featured emerging musicians performing in ad-hoc groupings with well-known professionals.