Ryan Porter died on May 16, 2026, at the age of 46, from complications following a severe car accident on April 28. The Los Angeles-born jazz trombonist and founding member of the West Coast Get Down collective was surrounded by loved ones when he passed. His bandmate and lifelong friend Tony Austin confirmed the news, writing that Porter’s condition had continued to deteriorate despite the best medical care after the accident left him with life-altering injuries.
Porter was born in Los Angeles on July 31, 1979, and came to the trombone after seeing the cover of J.J. Johnson’s album ‘Proof Positive’. His path into the West Coast Get Down began in high school, playing in the Multi-School Jazz Band in Watts under director Reggie Andrews alongside Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, Thundercat, and Ronald Bruner Jr. He later attended the Manhattan School of Music from 1997 to 2001, studying under Steve Turre and David Taylor, before returning to Los Angeles and helping build what would become one of the most celebrated jazz collectives in the country.
The West Coast Get Down’s recording sessions in the late 2000s, held in Kamasi Washington’s parents’ garage in conditions described as cramped and overheated, produced material that would eventually surface as Porter’s album ‘The Optimist’ in 2018. A decade-defining set of recordings from 2011 at Kingsize Soundlabs, in which the collective spent 30 straight days cutting music for seven different albums, yielded Washington’s landmark ‘The Epic’ and Porter’s debut ‘Spangle-Lang Lane’, a collection of reimagined children’s songs rendered in soulful jazz and hip-hop. Porter and his West Coast Get Down bandmates also contributed compositions to Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’, one of the defining albums of that decade.
Kamasi Washington’s tribute captured the depth of a friendship that stretched back to age 11. “You have been my friend for most of my life,” Washington wrote. “You would always tell me that you wanted more than anything else to be a Force for Good and you did it, you are the complete embodiment of that. Your life made this world better.” Porter’s 2019 album was titled ‘Force for Good’. He released his final album, ‘Resilience’, in 2022, and a documentary of the same name in 2024 highlighting free music programs for young artists across Los Angeles.