Carnegie Hall

Each summer, NYO Jazz, led by Artistic Director Sean Jones, shines a spotlight on the depth of talent found among teen jazz players across the United States. The program offers talented young musicians ages 16–19 the opportunity to perform as cultural ambassadors for their country, sharing a uniquely American musical genre with people around the world. The members of NYO Jazz have been recognized by Carnegie Hall as among the finest jazz musicians in the country following a rigorous and highly competitive audition process.

Since its debut in 2018, NYO Jazz has performed at Carnegie Hall and embarked on acclaimed tours across Europe, Asia, and the US. The ensemble has been invited to perform at prestigious concert halls and music festivals, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; Konzerthaus in Berlin; National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing; The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC; BBC Proms in London; Festival da Jazz in St. Moritz; Edinburgh International Festival; and the Lucerne Festival, among many others. Guest artists in past seasons have included vocalists Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Jazzmeia Horn, and Dee Dee Bridgewater. For NYO Jazz’s debut tour to South Africa this summer, which includes performances at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg, The Playhouse in Durban, and Artscape in Cape Town, the ensemble is joined by vocalist Alicia Olatuja as special guest and local South African artists join as soloists in each city. As part of their travel schedule, NYO Jazz musicians have opportunities to meet and collaborate with young local musicians and experience the richness of different cultures and music.

In 2021, the band recorded its first full-length studio album under Jones’s direction with special guest saxophonist Melissa Aldana. It includes Carnegie Hall–commissioned works for the ensemble from each year of the program, exploring themes that include social justice, resilience, and the power of music to spark joy. The album, entitled We’re Still Here, was released in 2022.

NYO Jazz builds on the success of the acclaimed National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA) and its sister ensemble for younger musicians, NYO2—programs created by Carnegie Hall in 2013 and 2016, respectively—to bring together the finest young classical musicians from across the country each summer for training, performances, and international touring. Each of these prestigious national programs—free to all participants—is dedicated to the proposition that talented young musicians thrive when given the opportunity to expand their musical, social, and cultural horizons and share their artistry with audiences around the globe.

To learn more about NYO Jazz, visit carnegiehall.org/NYOJazz.

Music and spirituality have always been intertwined in the artistic vision of trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator, and activist Sean Jones. Singing and performing as a child with the church choir in his hometown of Warren, Ohio, he switched from drums to trumpet at the age of 10.

Jones is a musical chameleon, comfortable in any setting or genre. After a six-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis offered him a permanent position as lead trumpeter of the ensemble, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015, Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. During this time, he kept a core group of talented musicians together under his leadership, forming the foundation for groups that have produced and released eight recordings on Mack Avenue Records, the latest being Sean Jones: Live from Jazz at the Bistro in 2017.

Jones has been prominently featured in recordings and performances with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Gerald Wilson, and Marcus Miller. He was selected by Miller, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter for theirTribute to Milestour in 2011. He has also performed with The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh and Youngstown symphony orchestras, as well as Soulful Symphony in Baltimore and a chamber group at the Salt Bay Chamberfest.

Jones is an internationally recognized educator. In addition to serving as artistic director of NYO Jazz, he is the immediate past president of the Jazz Education Network. In 2018, he was named the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Previously, he served as chair of the brass department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Vocalist, composer, and educator Alicia Olatuja performs aural artistry in a wondrous weave of jazz, blues, gospel, classical, pop, and Afropop. Her embrace of those sonic stylings has enabled her to work with a wide variety of musicians—from jazz superstars Chris Botti, Billy Childs, Christian McBride, and Michael Olatuja to R&B and gospel legends Chaka Khan and BeBe Winans.

Inspired by Whitney Houston, Olatuja started singing at age five. The St. Louis native sang in the Berean Seventh-Day Adventist Church; listened to a wide variety of Black music that included jazz, R&B, and soul; and was classically trained as a mezzo-soprano. After double majoring in veterinary medicine and music at the University of Missouri, she earned her master’s degree in classical voice and opera from the Manhattan School of Music.

In 2013, Olatuja sang the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir at President Obama’s second inauguration. New York Daily News praised her as “a new musical star.”

In 2014, Olatuja sang with Billy Childs’s touring ensemble that performed music from Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro. She went on to work with many other artists. She appeared on bassist Christian McBride’s recording The Movement Revisited: A Musical Portrait of Four Icons. She has also worked with drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. on his Songs of Freedom, a Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned project that featured the music of Abbey Lincoln, Joni Mitchell, and Nina Simone.

Olatuja’s debut recording, Timeless, earned a four-star review from DownBeat. Her second release, Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women, featured compositions by women including Sade, Linda Creed, Kate Bush, Tracy Chapman, and Angela Bofill. In 2023, she recorded The Parsonage: True Tales of Love and Anarchy at 64 East 7th Street, which features vocalist Theo Bleckmann. Her forthcoming projects include a reunion recording with Michael Olatuja, with whom she has been touring since 2021, and a new solo project.