Jake Baxendale - Waypeople

Wellington-based saxophonist and composer Jake Baxendale brings together a remarkable collective of Aotearoa’s leading jazz and contemporary musicians for Waypeople, a luminous new album inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s English-language version of the Tao Te Ching. Drawing from jazz, Chinese classical music and improvisation, the project fuses lyrical storytelling with meditative textures and powerful ensemble interplay.

Featuring Chelsea Prastiti (voice), Jia Ling (Jessie) (guzheng), Callum Passells (saxophones), Daniel Hayles (piano & vibraphone), Johnny Lawrence (double bass), and Cory Champion (drums), Waypeople transforms the timeless Taoist philosophy of harmony, balance, and paradox into sound. The result is a work of shimmering beauty — grounded in jazz but alive with the rhythm of ancient poetry and the pulse of contemporary life.

The Waypeople project began as a commission for the Wellington Jazz Festival, where Baxendale set verses from the Tao Te Ching to music for a newly formed ensemble featuring the Chinese guzheng (zither). “It was full of firsts,” says Baxendale. “The first time I’d set poetry to music, the first time I’d written for voice, and the first time I’d even heard a guzheng in person.” The result was a sold-out premiere, followed by appearances at the Creative Jazz Club Aotearoa, the NZ Fringe Festival (where the group was nominated for Best Musical Act), and Lōemis Winter Solstice Festival, with live visual art by Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant.

Recorded at Massey University Studio in Wellington and Genie Bottle Studio in Auckland, Waypeople captures the ensemble’s dynamic range - from meditative intimacy to ecstatic collective improvisation. Guest appearances include Louisa Williamson (flute), Kaito Walley (trombone), Ben Hunt (trumpet), JY Lee (flute), and Millie Manins (oboe).

Baxendale describes Waypeople as “music about letting go of ego, embracing contradiction, and finding flow.” Drawing on the Taoist principle of wu-wei — “doing by not doing” — the band performs with what he calls “effortless action,” a collective state of trust and responsiveness.

“The Tao reminds us to resist excess and to value simplicity, nature and humility,” says Baxendale. “These ideas feel urgent now - in art, in politics, in the environment. I wanted the music to reflect that: open, spacious, unforced, and deeply human.”