BaRcoDe by Ben Wendel

Visionary saxophonist and composer Ben Wendel presents BaRcoDe, a daring new electroacoustic album for saxophone and mallets (vibraphone and percussion). The project features four leading vibraphonists and percussionists - Joel Ross, Simon Moullier, Patricia Brennan, and Juan Diego Villalobos - and captures the energy of their residencies at The Jazz Gallery, recorded at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn. Across intricate compositions and immersive sound design, BaRcoDe blurs the line between chamber music, modern jazz, and electronic experimentation, expanding Wendel’s creative language into new terrain.

A two-time GRAMMY® nominee and co-founder of Kneebody, Wendel has built a career defined by range and reinvention. BaRcoDe continues that trajectory, uniting four boundary-pushing percussionists each redefining their instruments in distinctive ways – from Ross’s expressive harmonic sensibility to Moullier’s microtonal precision, Brennan’s processed textures, and Villalobos’s folkloric rhythmic intensity. Released March 13th, 2026 on Edition Records, the album embodies Wendel’s restless drive to explore sound as architecture - elastic, collaborative, and boldly futuristic.

Grammy nominated and award winning jazz saxophonist, Ben Wendel is known for his harmonically sophisticated, motivic-based style of improvisation and broad compositional style touching upon post-bop, classical, and post-rock influences. Co-founder of the group Kneebody, has played with Tigran Hamasyan, Gerald Clayton, Louis Cole, Snoop Dogg, Prince, Moonchild, Daedelus, Ambrose Akinmusire & more.