Trey Anastasio

Trey Anastasio has done a lot of different projects over his 38 years as a professional musician. He’s best known as the lead singer and guitarist for Phish, of course, but he has also worked with Broadway shows, symphony orchestras, avant-garde jazz musicians and roots-rockers. But his Ghosts of the Forest project is unlike any other.

“I feel like I’ve walked out onto a cliff that I can’t get off,” Trey Anastasio says in the midst of Phish’s 2019-closing residency at Madison Square Garden in New York. “I’m just going to walk backwards and fall off the cliff.”

The term “jamming” had been applied for decades to loose, largely improvised interactions among musicians, usually in an informal setting. In the 1920s, jazz musicians would interact after their regular gigs to drink, laugh and play. This aesthetic also became integral to the development of bluegrass in America and Cuban music in Havana, and has since informed rock, soul and hip-hop.