Ethan Helm is a New York-based saxophonist and composer known for his “macrocosmic musical vision” in contemporary jazz and beyond. His newest recording, Dreamscapes (2025), is a sweeping, album-length work for solo saxophone and electronics. Ethan leads the genre-hopping quintet “Cowboys & Frenchmen,” with whom he has released three albums on the Outside in Music record label, garnering frequent radio play and a four-star review in Downbeat Magazine, as well as two U.S. tours. He has performed saxophone and other woodwinds at Carnegie Hall, the Detroit Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Umbria Jazz Festival, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, Broadway musicals, and throughout the United States and Canada with Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project and Miho Hazama’s m_unit. He has also lent his “lyrical, kinetic, brightly spiraling alto sax” to global traditions of improvisation outside of jazz, performing and recording Balkan wedding music in Seido Salifoski and Brad Shepik’s Balkan Peppers, and Carnatic music in Svara, with Swaminathan Selvaganesh, Sam Minaie, and Dan Weiss.

Ethan composes and arranges for jazz ensembles and orchestras including the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, Shrine Big Band, and Air Forces in Europe Band. He was twice commissioned by the Chamber Orchestra at St. Matthew's in Los Angeles to compose and premiere works for improvising saxophonist and orchestra. He is also a member of the BMI Jazz Orchestra, the premier ensemble for New York City composers developing works for large jazz ensemble. Ethan was a featured presenter at the 2016 North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, performing his piece “Paul Desmond’s Sound” with the Texas Tech University Jazz Ensemble, and presented his research in jazz improvisation and pedagogy at the Jazz Educator’s Network 2024 Annual Conference. Ethan is the author of Patterns for Creative Improvisation, Volumes I and II (2020, 2023), Etudes for Creative Improvisation (2025), a doctoral dissertation on saxophonists’ interpretations of George Gershwin’s music, and many articles on jazz saxophone and pedagogy.

Ethan grew up in a musical family in Southern California and holds degrees from Eastman School of Music (BM) and New York University (MM, PhD). He is on faculty at NYU and Hofstra University as an instructor of music theory and saxophone.