North Carolina native Madison Rast graduated from the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and received his MM from Virginia Commonwealth University, as a recipient of the Carpenter Fellowship Scholarship. He moved to Philadelphia in the fall of 1999 to pursue a career in jazz. Since that time he has become one of the areas most in demand sidemen. His solid and steady bass lines have supported many notable musicians including Mickey Roker, Orrin Evans, Sean Jones, and Joanna Pascale. In 2012 he released his debut CD of his own original songs and arrangements. In 2014 he was part of a recording project with pianist Garry Dial and saxophonist Dick Oatts, in which the poetry of Walt Whitman is set to original music. Since 2018, Madison has been among the collective of jazz musicians known as the Captain Black Big Band under the direction of Orrin Evans, whose 2019 release Presence and 2020’s The Intangible Between were both nominated for a Grammy. Recently, Madison was featured on singer Amos Lee’s recording My Ideal, celebrating the music of Chet Baker.