Josh Evans

Josh Evans (* around 1985 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American jazz trumpeter.

Evans grew up in Hartford. He took a liking to the trumpet after listening to a Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie recording at age 10. Soon, he started taking trumpet lessons with Raymond "Dr. Rackle" Williams and after a year began performing regularly with Dr. Rackle's Sound Griot Brass Band.

At 14, Evans started studying with famed alto saxophonist/composer Jackie McLean, who had performed with such big names as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and Art Blakey. With McLean, he had the opportunity to appear in New York clubs such as the Blue Note and Iridium, the Regattabar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Bushnell Center for Performing Arts in Hartford, Connecticut. 

From 2005, Evans played for three years in the drummer Winard Harper's sextet, with whom he went on tours and made the first recording, Make It Happen, for Piadrum Records, in 2006. Harper's group at different points consisted of bassist Billy Taylor, saxophonist Frank Wess, pianist George Cables, and trumpet players Terrell Stafford, Claudio Roditi, and Phillip Harper.

In April 2007, Evans was invited to perform a two-week tour of Siberia with master saxophonist, and composer Benny Golson. Around the same time, he started playing trumpet for the famed drummer Rashied Ali and performed with his band until Ali's untimely death in August 2009. 

In the following years Evan worked, with pianist Christian Sands, Steve Davis, saxophonist Bob Mover, bassist Paul Brown, bassist Joris Teepe, Ralph Peterson, and the Captain Black Big Band by Orrin Evans. 

In the 2010s he was a member of the Joe Chambers Moving Pictures Orchestra and the Valery Ponomarev Jazz Big Band, with whom he performed at Lincoln Center. With the Rashied Ali Tribute Band, he recorded the album Live at the Zinc Bar. 

In 2011, Evans recorded and released his debut album Portrait.

In 2015, he released his second album, "Hope And Despair" with Passin' Thru Records. Albums credits include Kush Abadey and Eric McPherson on drums; Bruce Williams on alto saxophone; Rashaan Carter on bass guitar; David Bryant on piano; and Abraham Burton and Lawrence Clark on tenor saxophone.

Evans has also worked with Dezron Douglas, Ray McMorrin, Mike DiRubbo, Tyler Mitchell, and Greg Murphy. 

In jazz, Evans was involved in 32 recording sessions between 2006 and 2018, most recently with Louis Hayes, Jazzmeia Horn, Shamie Royston and Corcoran Holt.