Jerome Covington

Jerome Covington is a guitarist, composer, and improviser whose music seeks to create a sense of peace, reflection, and openness while simultaneously keeping a touchstone to the traditions of jazz. His sound is lyrical and spacious, shaped by a lifelong connection to improvisation and an enduring admiration for the emotional depth found in the music of the great jazz masters.

Covington began playing guitar as a young child and was drawn almost immediately toward composition and improvisation. For him, jazz was never simply a style of music to be studied from a distance, but a living emotional language capable of expressing nuance, vulnerability, restraint, and joy. Over time, that relationship deepened into something inseparable from daily life. Today, he describes jazz as “as familiar as family,” an essential and ongoing presence that continues to shape both his artistic outlook and his understanding of collaboration.

Among the strongest influences on Covington’s musical voice are the classic piano trio traditions represented by Bill Evans, Red Garland, and Sonny Clark. From Evans, he absorbed the value of listening, space, and conversational interplay; from Garland and Clark, a sense of swing, lyricism, and direct emotional communication. These influences continue to inform his approach to guitar performance and composition, where melody and atmosphere often take precedence over technical display.

A major turning point in Covington’s artistic development came during his time studying in the Jazz Studies program at the University of North Texas. During that time he forged creative relationships and led bands comprised of such musicians as Norah Jones, multi instrumentalist Aaron Crouch, bassist Marc Rogers, and drummer Bill Campbell. During this period he also began performing with bassist and producer Mike Davis, still a frequent collaborator. The intensity of the environment, combined with the opportunity to immerse himself fully in the jazz tradition, proved transformative. That period helped solidify both his musical discipline and his broader artistic philosophy: that the highest forms of improvisation emerge not from domination or virtuosity alone, but from openness, listening, and trust between musicians. This philosophy proved vital when he later performed as a sideman for headliner Ari Hoenig, also a former UNT classmate, for the Jazzmandu festival in Kathmandu, Nepal.

While Covington has explored technology extensively, including experimentation with generative approaches to composition and musical structure, his focus has increasingly returned to the human dimensions of music-making. In recent years, he has prioritized human-to-human collaboration and improvisation, emphasizing presence, spontaneity, and deep listening as central values in both performance and creative practice. This approach has been on full display in the spontaneous interplay apparent in his collaborations with percussionist Rohin Khemani as well as his work with drummer Rob Wallace.  

Whether performing, composing, or improvising, Covington aims to leave listeners with a sense of openness and a good feeling: music that looks toward the future while continuing to honor the emotional honesty, swing, and lyricism at the heart of the jazz tradition.