Kyle Downs is a Chicago-based guitarist, bassist, composer and instructor.

A Texas native and a musician from a young age, he began his formal education at Dallas’s famed Booker T. Washing High School for the Performing and Visual Arts before moving on to study Jazz Guitar at the University of North Texas’s famed College of Music, studying under Fred Hamilton, Noel Johnston and Rich McClure. 

Post-college, he served as the Director of Guitar Studies at the Pegasus School of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Dallas while maintaining an active performing schedule around DFW and Austin with his original band rock, Off World and as a freelancer in Dallas’s vibrant Jazz, Gospel, and Avant-garde scenes. 

Some highlights from his time include performances with Arthur Barrow (Frank Zappa, Giorgio Moroder, The Doors), JT Thompson (Snarky Puppy, FORQ, Mark Lettieri), Paul Slavens (KXT, Sounds Modern), and the release of Off World’s full-length Wayward.

Since moving to Chicago in late 2019, Kyle has worked extensively as a teacher and freelancer in the Chicagoland area. 

As a solo artist, Kyle seeks to highlight and explore the beauty of the points in which the country music, blues, and 70’s rock of his childhood intersect with the jazz and indie rock he came to embrace in adulthood, casting the music of the late 20th and 21st centuries through the filter of the jazz guitar trio format. Released in 2022, his self-produced EP, Window Shopper exhibits Kyle’s musical imagination in a more thoroughly composed arena, in contrast with his improvisation-focused live performances.

In addition to performing his own original music, Kyle has appeared in a wide variety of musical settings, with the New Philharmonic Orchestra, Jazz Consortium and Jazz Community Big Bands, Indie singer-songwriter Richard Bandini (contributing guitar, arrangements and songwriting duties on his 2025 album, Twosome), Twihard! (musical parody of the Twilight book/movie series), Felonious Drunk, and Adjacent Cruise, to name a few.