NATE WOOLEY (b. 1974) grew up in a finnish-american fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the space between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He began playing trumpet professionally at age 13 with his father, and after studying for four years at the University of Oregon, he moved to Colorado where he studied more with Ron Miles, Art Lande, Fred Hess, and Jack Wright

Nate currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and performs solo trumpet improvisations as well as with his trio Blue Collar with Steve Swell and Tatsuya Nakatani. He has also performed with Anthony Braxton, Bhob Rainey, Alessandro Bosetti, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joe Morris, Fritz Welch, Herb Robertson, Kevin Norton, Tony Malaby, Randy Peterson, Tim Barnes, Okkyung Lee, Assif Tsahar, and other improvisation luminaries.

This year, he will release the long-awaited second Blue Collar album, "Lovely Hazel" on Public Eyesore Records as well as a new solo disc, "Wrong shape to be a storyteller" on Creative Sources Recordings. He is quite a gentleman and likes to hear from all people great and small. He can be contacted through his website at natewooley.com.