Nathan Nakadegawa-Lee

Nathan Nakadegawa-Lee is an Oakland-born, New York-based saxophonist, clarinetist and composer whose playing pulls together experimental, vocal, blues and jazz traditions. He graduated from The New School's jazz and contemporary music program, where his teachers included Melissa Aldana, Darius Jones, Jon Irabagon and Anat Cohen. He has worked alongside Billy Martin, Faye Carol, Azure McCall, Selendis Sebastian Alexander Johnson and Lesley Mok, and has played Dizzy's Club, The Stone and Le Poisson Rouge in New York as well as Yoshi's Oakland and the Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland. He runs Bellcave, a house show series in his Queens basement devoted to original and experimental music. In 2020 he released Before All This, a set of duo improvisations with Nick Reeves on cello and bass, and issued Book Someone New in 2026.