Carnegie Hall

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

Mr. Jones is a musical chameleon, comfortable in any musical setting no matter the role 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, Mr. Jones was tapped to become a member of the SFJAZZ Collective. During this time, he has managed to keep 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. His most recent is the 2017 release Sean Jones: Live from Jazz at the Bistro.

Mr. 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 Mr. Miller, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter for their A Tribute to Miles tour in 2011. He has also performed with the Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown symphony orchestras, as well as Soulful Symphony in Baltimore and a chamber group at the Salt Bay Chamberfest.

Mr. Jones is an internationally recognized educator. He was recently appointed the Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair in Jazz Studies at The John Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Previously, he served as chair of the brass department at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Luques Curtis was born in 1983 in Hartford, Connecticut. He studied at institutions that include the Greater Hartford Academy of Performing Arts, The Artists Collective, and the Guakia cultural center with Dave Santoro, Volcan Orham, Nat Reeves, and Paul Brown. While still in high school, he was fortunate to study Afro-Caribbean music with bass greats Andy Gonzalez and Joe Santiago. He later earned a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied with John Lockwood and Ron Mahdi. While in Boston, he was also able to work with great musicians such as Gary Burton, Ralph Peterson, Donald Harrison, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and Francisco Mela. He was named a Rising Star Bassist in DownBeat’s 2016 Critics Poll, and received the Ralph Bunche Fellowship to complete his master’s degree at the Mason Gross School of the Arts.

Now based in the New York area, Mr. Curtis co-owns the Truth Revolution record label with his brother, Zaccai. Together, they have released five recordings as the Curtis Brothers, most recently Algorithm. Mr. Curtis has collaborated on Brian Lynch’s Grammy Award–winning Simpático and Grammy-nominated Madera Latino, as well as Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah’s Grammy-nominated Rewind That. He produced Andy Gonzalez’s Grammy-nominated Entre Colegas. He has performed as a sideman on more than 100 recordings, including Eddie Palmieri’s Sabiduria and Mi Luz Mayor; Gary Burton’s Next Generation; Dave Valentin’s Come Fly with Me; Sean Jones’s Im.Pro.Vise, Roots, Kaleidoscope, and The Search Within; and Orrin Evans’s Faith in Action.

A native of Seaside, California, Tanya Darby is a current and veteran member of such groups as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Roy Hargrove Big Band, The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, Michel Camilo Big Band, and Rufus Reid Large Ensemble, among others. She has performed and toured with artists who include Dianne Reeves, Clark Terry, Jon Faddis, Paquito D’Rivera, and Gladys Knight, and ensembles such as the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Count Basie Orchestra, Ron Carter’s Great Big Band, Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Mingus Big Band. She has appeared on BET on Jazz as part of the T. S. Monk Sextet and performed with Aretha Franklin as part of the “Arista Records 25th Anniversary Celebration” on NBC.

Sought-after for her accomplishments as a trumpeter, Ms. Darby has played lead in numerous bands, including Paquito D’Rivera and the United Nation Orchestra, George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Manhattan Jazz Orchestra, and Jimmy Heath’s Queens Jazz Orchestra, among many others.

An experienced educator, Ms. Darby is a former assistant professor of lead trumpet at the University of North Texas. She has also served as adjunct faculty at Temple University and New York City’s New School.

Multiple Grammy Award–nominated trombonist and composer Marshall Gilkes integrates myriad influences into a singular and distinctive voice, combining the spontaneous inventiveness of jazz with the elegant architecture of classical composition, and virtuosic technique with passionate emotion. His sound can be heard in the lush impressionism of the Maria Schneider Orchestra, the unique Slide Monsters Trombone Quartet, and on Monday nights at the world-famous Village Vanguard as lead trombonist with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra.

Mr. Gilkes has conducted his music with the WDR Big Band, UMO Jazz Orchestra, The Airmen of Note, and The US Army Blues. He has also performed with Makoto Ozone, Billy Cobham, Richard Bona, and Edmar Castañeda. He was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2003. Mr. Gilkes has released six albums as a bandleader. The latest, Waiting to Continue, showcases his playing and writing in a trio setting. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School and is an SE Shires Artist.

New York City–based drummer, composer, and teacher Allison Miller engages her deep roots in improvisation as a vehicle for exploring music. Described by critics as a “modern jazz icon in the making,” Ms. Miller won DownBeat’s 67th Annual Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer and JazzTimes’s 2019 Critics Poll for Best Jazz Drummer. Her composition “Otis Was a Polar Bear” was included on NPR’s list of “The 200 Greatest Songs by 21st Century Women+.” She is also the first recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s commissioning grant.

Ms. Miller is a three-time Jazz Ambassador for the US State Department. In 2019, she was the Monterey Jazz Festival’s 2019 artist-in-residence alongside bassist and producer Derrick Hodge. The same year, her band Boom Tic Boom celebrated its 10th anniversary with the release of its fifth album, Glitter Wolf, which was included among the best jazz of 2019 by NPR, Rolling Stone, and JazzTimes. When not leading Boom Tic Boom, Ms. Miller co-directs Parlour Game with Jenny Scheinman and Science Fair with Carmen Staaf. She is also a proud member of the critically acclaimed supergroup Artemis, whose debut release appeared in many lists of the best jazz of 2020. Artemis was named the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2020 Mid-Sized Ensemble of the Year.

Ms. Miller teaches at The New School’s School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, where she is a Melba Liston Fellow; Stanford Jazz Workshop; Centrum; Geri Allen Jazz Camp; and Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz. She is the artistic director of Jazz Camp West, and for her work with Jazz Education Abroad, she has been appointed Arts Envoy to Thailand. She endorses Yamaha drums, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth sticks, Evans drumheads, and Sunhouse Percussion.

Denver-born Shamie Royston is a pianist, composer, and educator. The New York Times has called her “a rhythmic vanguardist …who channels Kenny Kirkland, Geri Allen, Ahmad Jamal and McCoy Tyner.” She received her master’s degree in music composition from the University of Denver with top honors.

Ms. Royston has been commissioned to compose and arrange works for Tia Fuller, Dianne Reeves, and other prominent musicians; she has also been commissioned to arrange her original works for New York’s Penfield Central School District, Denver’s Metropolitan State University, the Colorado Music Educators Association, and Boston’s Berklee College of Music. She was a key figure in Berklee’s first annual State of Jazz Composition Symposium and Concert Series, where her works were performed alongside such jazz luminaries as Terence Blanchard, Geri Allen, and Maria Schneider.

Ms. Royston is known as an exemplary educator, for which she has been honored with several awards. At the prestigious Berklee School of Music, she held a full-time a professorship in the jazz composition department. She is currently assistant director of the New Jersey Youth Symphony Orchestra’s jazz program. She has also adjudicated high school and college jazz festivals and served as clinician for major ensembles in the US and abroad.

Since her arrival in the New York City area in 2006, Ms. Royston has been a steady member of the Tia Fuller Quartet and has performed and recorded with many other great artists, including Christian McBride, Ralph Peterson, Terri Lyne Carrington, John Patitucci, and Sean Jones. She has performed in the world’s top jazz venues and festivals, including the North Sea, Montreal International, and Dominican Republic jazz festivals.

Ms. Royston’s most recent CD, entitled Beautiful Liar—released on the Sunnyside label in June 2018—has received rave reviews from Downbeat, JAZZIZ, NPR, and others. This recording appeared in the first round of voting for the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Her debut CD, Portraits, was released in 2014 by Hot Tone Music.

Grammy Award–winning baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian is one of the most in-demand musicians on the scene today. She came to New York in 1997 to attend the Manhattan School of Music and soon began touring with groups such as The DIVA Jazz Orchestra and Artie Shaw Orchestra. She performs as a bandleader around the New York City area with her quartet, the LSQ, or with her quintet, LSAT—co-led with alto saxophonist Alexa Tarantino—which recently won first place in the Made in New York Jazz Competition. She is also co-director of the all-female collective Lioness. As a sidewoman, she can be heard regularly with the Mingus Big Band, and has performed with countless other groups, including Steely Dan, the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, Christian McBride Big Band, Robin Eubanks Mass Line Big Band, and the legendary Count Basie Orchestra.

Ms. Sevian’s debut album, Blueprint, was released on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle Music to critical acclaim, winning a SESAC Jazz Award and receiving rave reviews in DownBeat, Cadence, and All About Jazz. Her sophomore album, Bliss, was released in the spring of 2018 on Posi-Tone Records and features all-stars of the jazz scene, including Alexa Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Christian McBride, and E. J. Strickland.

In addition to teaching privately for more than 15 years, Ms. Sevian is associate professor of woodwinds at the Berklee College of Music. She has adjudicated at many jazz competitions and festivals, notably Essentially Ellington, Next Generation Jazz Festival, Victoria Music Festivals (Melbourne, Australia), and Eau Claire Jazz Festival. She was named Baritone Saxophonist of the Year at the 2020 JJA Jazz Awards and the 2019 HotHouse Jazz Awards, and Rising Star Baritone Saxophonist in the 67th Downbeat Critics Poll. She endorses Buffet-Crampon saxophones, D’Addario Woodwinds, RPC Mouthpieces, Key Leaves, Robinson’s Remedies, and BG France accessories.

Reginald Thomas can be seen fronting his own groups—the Mardra/Reggie Thomas Ensemble and organ trio OGD—on both piano and Hammond organ, and performing as sideman with great artists that include Hamiet Bluiett, Ann Hampton Callaway, and the Carl Allen / Rodney Whitaker ensemble. He often performs with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra as accompanist at the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition.

Mr. Thomas appears as guest artist at collegiate jazz festivals around the country, including those at Lawrence University, the University of South Florida, and Texas Tech University. He has also performed internationally, in Tokyo, Bangkok, Macau, Jakarta, Calgary, Milan, Warsaw, Poznan, Senegal, and London. In recordings, he has collaborated with Clay Jenkins, Kim Richmond, and Clark Terry / Mike Vax. His latest recording with his wife, Mardra—Matters of the Heart (MRT Jazz)—was released in 2015. Mr. Thomas has been awarded the Excellence in the Arts Award from the Arts and Education Council of St. Louis, and was named best jazz artist by the Riverfront Times in 2005.

After almost 20 years as professor of music at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and three years at Michigan State University as professor of jazz piano, Mr. Thomas now leads the Northern Illinois University School of Music’s jazz studies program. He also works as consultant and clinician with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington Program and Band Director Academy. He is an active member of summer jazz faculties in the US and abroad, and a frequent director of all-state jazz bands, combos, and choirs. Mr. Thomas earned his master’s degree in music education from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and his bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University.

Growing up in Akron, Ohio, Dan Wilson spent his youth in the church community, where his musical path began. Traces of his major guitar influences—including Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, and George Benson—can be discerned in his playing, but his musical identity has been shaped by everything from gospel and blues to traditional jazz, hip-hop, and horn players like Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson.

After graduating from Hiram College, Mr. Wilson made his recording debut with pianist Joe McBride and performed with Joey DeFrancesco and Christian McBride’s Tip City to worldwide acclaim. He eventually recorded his debut as a leader on To Whom It May Concern. Mr. Wilson has had the honor of sharing the stage with jazz greats who include Eric Marienthal, Russell Malone, Les McCann, René Marie, Jeff Hamilton, David Sanborn, and Dave Stryker. He also teaches jazz guitar and music theory through private lessons.

Notable collaborations include performances with jazz great Joey DeFrancesco in his trio and on his album Project Freedom, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. This collaboration allowed Mr. Wilson to insert his own dialect into DeFrancesco’s highly respected musical idiom. He has additionally toured with Christian McBride’s trio Tip City. McBride served as producer on Mr. Wilson’s album Vessels of Wood and Earth and released the recording on his own Brother Mister Productions through Mack Avenue Music Group. Released in 2021, the album is available on all platforms.