Rent Romus is a saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, music producer, and community activist. Since 1988, his work on the saxophone has been dubbed “ferocious” by the San Francisco Weekly and “central to the creative music world of the West Coast” by writer Frank Rubolino. He leads the Lords of Outland a free improvisation unit, the Life’s Blood Ensemble a composition based contemporary group, and the Otherworld Ensemble a Finnish/American collective exploring new perspectives in heritage and traditional folk. He has recorded over 50 albums exploring a wide variety of musical settings which have included beat poet founder ruth weiss, and creative music pioneers Chico Freeman, John Tchicai, and Vinny Golia, Teppo Hauta-aho, Heikki Koskinen, Thollem McDonas, Stefan Pasborg, Marcos Fernandez, and Ernesto Diaz-Infante to name a few. He is the founder of Edgetone Records a community driven label with over 30 years of independent music production, and the creator of Outsound Presents, an all-volunteer musician run non-profit music presenting organization since 2000.

His main instrument is the alto saxophone doubling on c-melody, soprano, sopranino saxophones, various flutes and small percussion. His interests cross both genre and music notation styles from freeimprovisation to composition and graphic score. In addition to a background in jazz he is well versed in experimental, noise, drone, blues, rock, and traditional folk music forms.