Complete Communion is a new octet led by trumpeter and composer Antonio Atsuya Mollura, created to explore the intimacy that can emerge inside a large ensemble and how that energy materializes in real time. While the music draws heavy influence from the jazz lineage—particularly the works Billy Strayhorn, Charles Mingus, and Don Cherry—the project also uses the scale of the group to weave in elements of Antonio’s own heritage, including Japanese and Argentine folk traditions.

This operation has no strict constraints: open forms, shifting roles, and flexible improvisation shape the core of the repertoire. Yet the ensemble remains grounded by the collective experience of eight young improvisers, each able to move between melody,leading, following, texture, and rhythm as the moment demands. Complete Communion is designed as a space where composition and improvisation meet, and where the sound of a large group can stay personal, immediate, and responsive.

Antonio Atsuya Mollura is a young American trumpeter, composer, and arranger based in New York. He has performed with artists across genres, including Willow Smith, Shawn Mendes, Martin Wind, Alan Ferber, and Dezron Douglas. His mentors include musicians such as Lenny White, Michael Rodriguez, and Maria Grand, whose approaches have shaped not only his improvisational language but his relationship to music, writing, and leadership. Though Antonio has worked extensively in various small-group settings, Complete Communion is his first full-scale large-ensemble project built entirely around his own writing, bringing together his influences through a collective and improviser-forward lens. This is music that strives to be honest—using jazz as the vernacular for truth.

Antonio Atsuya - Trumpet, Matthew Garcia - Tenor Saxophone, Sophia Kickhofel - Alto Saxophone, Bruno Tzinas - Trombone, Dylan K. Smith - Vibraphone, Abe Gold - Piano, Daniel Song - Bass, Koleby Royston - Drums

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