Joe Fonda


Joe Fonda is an American jazz bassist.

Career

Fonda was born in Amsterdam, New York to parents who both played jazz. He played guitar as a youth but switched to bass guitar later. He studied bass at Berklee College of Music, where he also began playing upright bass. He played in the New Haven, Connecticut area in the early 1980s, and recorded with Wadada Leo Smith. In 1994 he began playing with Anthony Braxton, collaborating with him extensively for the next five years. He and Michael Jefry Stevens led the Fonda-Stevens band that began in 1991. Since the late 1990s Fonda has recorded often as a bandleader.
Fonda has also explored dance in relation to jazz. He played bass with a dance company in the 1980s and incorporated a tap dancer into his ensemble for the albums From the Source and The Healing.

Discography

As leader or co-leader

  • Looking for the Lake
  • Up from the Sky
  • What We're Hearing
  • From the Source
  • Full Circle Suite
  • When It's Time
  • Distance
  • Step-in
  • Heat Suite
  • Loaded Basses
  • A Drop of Water
  • Trio Joy
  • Dreamstruck with Marilyn Crispell and Harvey Sorgen
  • With Grace in Mind with Marilyn Crispell and Harvey Sorgen
With Michael Jefry Stevens
  • The Wish
  • Live from Brugge
  • Parallel Lines
  • Evolution
  • Live at the Bunker
  • The Healing
  • Twelve Improvisations
  • Forever Real
  • Trio
  • Memphis
  • Live in Katowice
  • 20th Anniversary Tour Live
  • From the Roots to the Sky
With the Nu Band
  • Live at the Bop Shop & Rochester NY
  • Live
  • The Dope and the Ghost
  • Lower East Side Blues
  • Live in Paris
  • The Cosmological Constant
  • The Final Concert
  • Live in Geneva
With Conference Call
With the FAB Trio
With the OGJB Quartet
  • Bamako
  • ''Ode to O''

    As sideman

With Barry Altschul
  • The 3dom Factor
  • Tales of the Unforeseen
  • Live in Kraków
  • Long Tall Sunshine
With Anthony Braxton
  • Anthony Braxton's Charlie Parker Project 1993
  • Knitting Factory 1994, Vol. 1
  • Knitting Factory 1994, Vol. 2
  • 10 Compositions 1995
  • Piano Quartet, Yoshi's 1994
  • Composition No. 173
  • Sextet 1996
  • Tentet 1996
  • Four Compositions 1995
  • Octet 1995
  • Ensemble 1995
  • Small Ensemble Music 1994
  • Trillium R
  • Knitting Factory 1994, Vol. 2
  • Ninetet 1997 Vol. 1
  • Ninetet 1997 Vol. 2
  • Ninetet 1997 Vol. 3
  • Ninetet 1997 Vol. 4
  • GTM 1997 Vol. 1
  • GTM 1997 Vol. 2
With Satoko Fujii
  • Duet
  • Mizu
  • Triad
  • Four
With others