Trained as a physicist, Jesse Canterbury has played music for years in a wide variety of situations. He discovered creative music through a 1992 performance of Terry Riley’s landmark piece In C and was instantly hooked. He maintained a double life as a physicist and musician throughout the 1990s, conducting research on mass spectrometry, nonlinear dynamics, and femtosecond laser physics while performing the music of John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pauline Oliveros, as well as improvising on a regular basis. After receiving a Masters degree from the University of Texas at Austin, he took a detour from scientific pursuits, moved to Seattle, and began studying music intensively. Through these studies and a myriad of musical interests and influences, most notably the work of clarinetists William O. Smith and François Houle, he has developed a unique approach to the clarinet that includes a remarkably lyrical sound in addition to a large vocabulary of extended techniques.

Throughout his performing career, he has worked and performed with many of the luminaries of creative music, including George Lewis, Butch Morris, Derek Bailey, Walter Thompson, Wayne Horvitz, Daniel Carter, and John Edwards. Jesse has appeared multiple times at festivals such as the Seattle Improvised Music Festival, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Earshot Jazz's Voice and Vision Series, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, and Seattle’s Arts-in-Nature Festival. In addition to his improvising activities, he keeps an active schedule as a chamber musician. Notable performances include the American premiere of William O. Smith’s 10x200 (with the University of Washington Contemporary Group), Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, Oliver Messiaen’s Quatour Pour La Fin du Temps (with the Seattle New Music Ensemble) , Alban Berg’s Vier Stücke, Michael Tenzer’s Three Island Duets (with Canadian virtuoso François Houle), and many new chamber works by Pacific Northwest composers. Other performances have included music by Toru Takemitsu, Chen Yi, and Elliott Carter.

Jesse is a member of many ensembles making many different kinds of music: the Tom Baker Quartet (avant-jazz), Cipher (free improv and new compositions), the Seattle New Music Ensemble (classical chamber music), and the Meridian Ensemble (classical chamber music). He has recorded, with William O. Smith, an album of music for two clarinetists, featuring world-premiere recordings of several new works by Smith, in addition to commissions from François Houle and Tom Baker. He can be heard on Present Sounds Records, Capstone, and New World Records.