Ekep Nkwelle is a force in today's jazz scene, charting a remarkable journey from the vibrant culture of Washington, DC, to the iconic stages of New York City and beyond. She refined her musical gifts through rigorous academic training, earning a diploma from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a Bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a Master’s from The Juilliard School.
Her voice has captivated legendary jazz figures such as Wynton Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, the late Russell Malone, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Catherine Russell, Cyrus Chestnut, and Jeff "Tain" Watts, earning her multiple opportunities to collaborate with these luminaries. A dynamic performer, Ekep has left her mark on world-renowned stages, including Umbria Jazz Festival in Italy, Marians Jazzroom in Switzerland, the San Javier Jazz Festival in Spain, Carnegie Hall in New York City, NPR's Tiny Desk Concert in DC, and SFJAZZ in San Francisco.

In 2023, she was honored with the prestigious Juilliard Career Advancement Grant, nominated by Marsalis, recognizing her exceptional artistry and promise. Beyond the stage, she contributes her talents to influential arts organizations such as The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Jazz Houston, and The Woodshed Network. As one of Jazz at Lincoln Center's latest rising stars, Ekep is poised to shape the future of jazz.

Wycliffe Gordon experiences an impressive career touring the world performing to great acclaim from audiences and critics alike.  

Last year, Jazz Journalists Association named him 2022 “Trombonist of the Year” for the record-breaking 15^th time, and he’s topped Downbeat Critics Poll for “Best Trombone” for an unprecedented six times (2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2013 & 2012).   Recent awards include the “Louie Award”, the International Trombone Award and the Satchmo Award, among others.  Wycliffe is a prolific recording artist and is extremely popular for his unmatched signature sound, plunger technique and unique vocals.  He can be heard on hundreds of recordings, soundtracks, live DVD’s and documentaries, and has an extensive catalog of original compositions that span the various timbres of jazz and chamber music.  His arrangement of the theme song to NPR’s “All Things Considered” is heard daily across the globe.   

In addition to a successful solo career, Gordon tours regularly leading the International All Stars performing at festivals and performing arts centers worldwide.  Gordon is also one of America’s most persuasive and committed music educators and is highly sought after as a clinician and guest speaker.

Wycliffe Gordon is a Yamaha Performing Artist and has his own line of Wycliffe Gordon Pro Signature Mouthpieces by Pickett Brass.

In the history of Jazz music, there is only one bandleader that has the distinction of having his orchestra still performing sold out concerts all over the world, with members personally chosen by him, for nearly 40 years after his passing. Pianist and bandleader William James “Count” Basie was and still is an American institution that personifies the grandeur and excellence of Jazz. The Count Basie Orchestra, today directed by Scotty Barnhart, has won every respected jazz poll in the world at least once, won 18 Grammy Awards, performed for Kings, Queens, and other world Royalty, appeared in several movies, television shows, at every major jazz festival and major concert hall in the world. The most recent honor is a 2024 Grammy Win ofBest Large Jazz Ensemble for “Basie Swings the Blues”!  Other honors include their 2022 Grammy Nomination for Live At Birdland, a 2018 Grammy Nomination for All About That Basie, which features special guests Stevie Wonder, Jon Faddis, and Take 6 among others, and the 2018 Downbeat Readers Poll Award as the #1 Jazz Orchestra in the world. Their critically acclaimed release in 2015 of A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas! is the very first holiday album in the 80-year history of the orchestra. Released on Concord Music, it went to #1 on the Jazz charts and sold out on Amazon! Special guests include vocalists Johnny Mathis, Ledisi, our own Carmen Bradford and pianist Ellis Marsalis. A BBC TV produced documentary on Mr. Basie and the orchestra entitled Count Basie: Through His Own Eyes premiered on PBS in the US and UK in 2019 coinciding with the orchestra’s 85^th Anniversary. It features interviews by Quincy Jones, Scotty Barnhart, Dee Askew, John Williams, and several other important members and associates of Mr. Basie and the orchestra.

Some of the greatest soloists, composers, arrangers, and vocalists in jazz history such as Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, Sonny Payne, Freddie Green, Snooky Young, Frank Wess, and Joe Williams, became international stars once they began working with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra. This great 18-member orchestra is still continuing the excellent history started by Basie of stomping and shouting the blues, as well as refining those musical particulars that allow for the deepest and most moving of swing.

William "Count" Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1904. He began his early playing days by working as a silent movie pianist and organist and by eventually working with the Theater Owners Booking Agency (TOBA) circuit. In 1927, Basie, then touring with Gonzelle White and the Big Jazz Jamboree, found himself stranded in Kansas City, Missouri. It was here that he would begin to explore his deep love of the Blues and meet his future band mates including bassist Walter Page.

Walter Page's Blue Devils and Benny Moten's Kansas City Orchestra caught Basie’s ear and soon he was playing with both and serving as second pianist and arranger for Mr. Moten. In 1935, Bennie Moten died, and it was left to Basie to take some of the musicians from that orchestra and form his own, The Count Basie Orchestra, which is still alive and well today some 86 years later. His orchestra epitomized Kansas City Swing and along with the bands of Fletcher Henderson, Jimmy Lunceford, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, Basie's orchestra would define the big band era.

While the media of the period crowned Benny Goodman the "King of Swing", the real King of Swing was undoubtedly Count Basie. As the great Basie trumpeter Sweets Edison once said, “we used to tear all of the other bands up when it came to swing”. The Basie orchestra evolved into one of the most venerable and viable enterprises in American music with the highest levels of continued productivity rivaling any musical organization in history.

With the April In Paris recording in 1955, the orchestra began to set standards of musical achievement that have been emulated by every jazz orchestra since that time. One of the things that set Mr. Basie’s orchestra apart from all others and is one of the secrets to its longevity, is the fact the Basie allowed and actually encouraged his musicians to compose and arrange especially for the orchestra and its distinctive soloists such as Snooky Young, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, and Frank Wess on flute, who recorded the very first jazz flute solo in history. The orchestra also began to become the first choice for the top jazz vocalists of the day including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and of course, Basie’s “Number One Son”, the great Joe Williams.

During the 1960s and throughout the 1970s and into the 80s, the orchestra’s sound, swing feel, general articulation and style began to become more laid back and even more relaxed. As 30-year veteran trumpeter Sonny Cohn once stated, “this is a laid...back...orchestra....a...laid...back...orchestra”.  With very few personnel changes, the orchestra members were able to blend into one sound and one way of phrasing that is now known as the “Basie way”.

Since Basie's passing in 1984, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, Grover Mitchell, Bill Hughes, Dennis Mackrel, and since September 2013, Scotty Barnhart, have led the Count Basie Orchestra and maintained it as one of the elite performing organizations in Jazz.

Current members include one musician hired by Basie himself: Trombonist Clarence Banks (1984).  Long-time members include Doug Miller (1989, formerly w/Lionel Hampton), guitarist Will Matthews from Kansas City (1996), and members who have 15-25 years of service; trombonist Mark Williams, trumpeters Shawn Edmonds and Endre Rice, saxophonists Doug Lawrence (formerly w/Benny Goodman) and returning on lead alto, David Glasser.  Newer members include bassist Trevor Ware, lead trumpeter Frank Greene III and trumpeter Brandon Lee, pianist Reginald Thomas, lead trombonist Isrea Butler, bass trombonist Ronald Wilkins, alto sax and flute Stantawn Kendrick and the youngest members, drummer Robert Boone and baritone saxophonist Josh Lee. 

For more than a decade, Sullivan Fortner has been stretching deep-rooted talents as a pianist, composer, band leader and uncompromising individualist. The GRAMMY Award-winning artist and educator out of New Orleans received international praise as both key player and producer for his collaborative work on The Window, alongside Cecile McLorin Salvant, and earned a 2023 GRAMMY nomination for his provocative arrangement of “Optimistic Voices/No Love Dying” from her 2022 release Ghost Song.

“Fortner beautifully, slowly and deliberately asks the eternal question of the essence of love — his notes dance, come to a halt and resume the twirls.”
— OffBeat Magazine

In addition to his celebrated releases as a co-leader and collaborator, as a solo leader he has issued Aria (2015), Moments Preserved (2018) and Solo Game (2024) to effusive critical acclaim, the lattermost receiving 4-star reviews in DownBeat and France’s Telerama Magazine. “[Sullivan] is one of the best pianists in the world today and he has all of the musical attributes I love: creativity, technique always in the service of expression, joy and humor, fearlessness and pianistic mastery,” says album producer, GRAMMY-nominated artist Fred Hersch. Fortner looks forward to releasing his forthcoming trio recording Southern Nights in 2025, which features Peter Washington and Marcus Gilmore.

“He is a spiritually thematic soul, alone in the studio he plays his concerns into the music. What we hear is a musician seeking safety in the studio, using every tool nearby to create a forcefield protecting him from a threatening environment and in this chamber, we hear a world emerge.”
— Jason Moran

Winner of the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Jazz Group: Sullivan Fortner Trio, the prolific artist soon earned the Western Jazz Presenters grant, empowering him to lead his trio — which features Tyrone Allen and Kayvon Gordon — on a coastal tour of the U.S. through Albuquerque, New Mexico, Portland, Oregon and Oakland and Monterey, California. Over the past decade, he has enjoyed creative associations with such diverse voices as Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Diane Reeves, Etienne Charles and John Scofield; his frequent and longtime collaborators have included Ambrose Akinmusire, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Stefon Harris, Kassa Overall, Tivon Pennicott, Peter Bernstein, Nicholas Payton, Billy Hart, Gary Bartz, Chief Adjuah, Fred Hersch and the late Roy Hargrove. Recent collaborations include GRAMMY-nominated releases Dear Love (Empress Legacy) and Generations from leaders Jazzmeia Horn and The Baylor Project, respectively.

“His fundamentals as a player could hardly be stronger, and his instincts as a composer and bandleader are almost startlingly mature.”
— The New York Times

Playing solo or leading an orchestra, Fortner engages harmony and rhythmic ideas through curiosity and clarity. Within phrases, he finds universes, and listeners often hear how he’s moved by each note he explores. Coming up in New Orleans, Fortner began playing piano at age 7, following a storied lineage of improvisers, masters of time and every iteration of the blues. He earned his Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory and Master of Music in Jazz Performance from Manhattan School of Music (MSM). A champion of mentorship, Fortner has offered masterclasses at MSM, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA), Purdue University, Lafayette Summer Music Workshop, Belmont University and Oberlin Conservatory where he held a faculty position. In spring 2023, he again returned to his undergraduate alma mater as visiting professor of jazz piano.

“Fortner [displays] an ease of expression that stems from a longtime commitment to the music.”
— DownBeat

A highly-sought improviser, Fortner has performed across the country and throughout the world at such cultural institutions as Snug Harbor, New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Lorraine’s and The Jazz Playhouse in New Orleans, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jazz Standard and Smalls Jazz Club in New York City. He’s appeared at celebrated festivals, including Newport, Monterey, Discover, Tri-C and Gillmore Keyboard, among others. In 2019, Fortner brought his band to the historic Village Vanguard for a week-long engagement he would reprise in 2020 as a virtual performance during lockdown. His notable studio contributions include work on Etienne Charles’s Kaiso (Culture Shock, 2011), Donald Harrison’s Quantum Leap (FOMP, 2010), and Theo Croker’s The Fundamentals (Left Sided Music, 2007).

Pulling distinct elements from different eras, Fortner’s artistry preserves the tradition and evolves the sound. He seeks connections among different musical styles that are at once deeply soulful and wildly inventive. Both his works and his insights have been featured in culture drivers from The New York Times to The Root. Further accolades include the 2015 Cole Porter Fellowship awarded by the American Pianists Association, Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellowship, the 2016 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists and, in 2020, the prestigious Shifting Foundation Grant for artistic career development.

Sarah Hanahan is an up-and-coming jazz saxophonist in New York City. Sarah is a graduate of the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School of Music where she received her Bachelors degree in 2019, as well as The Juilliard School where she received her Masters degree in 2022. She has had the privilege of studying with some of the greats of our time including Abraham Burton, Nat Reeves, Steve Davis, Billy Drummond, and Marc Cary.

Recently, Sarah has been working with many renowned musicians including Jeff “Tain” Watts, Nat Reeves, Peter Martin, Steve Davis, Billy Hart, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jason Moran, Marc Cary and many others. Sarah plays regularly with her own band in venues around NYC such as Smalls Jazz Club, Dizzy’s Club, Smoke Jazz Club, Birdland Jazz Club, The Django, and more. She also recently had the opportunity to play for the 2023 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert at the Kennedy Center honoring Sue Mingus with the Mingus Dynasty Band. Sarah tours both nationwide and internationally with Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y, Sherrie Miracle and the Diva Orchestra, Joe Farnsworth, and the Grammy award-winning Mingus Big Band.

Sarah was recently featured in the first-ever class of NPR Jazz Night in America’s Youngbloods. The series features “five up-and-coming jazz geniuses who are revolutionizing their genre” - all of whom are under the age of 30.

Hanahan’s debut album, Among Giants, is OUT NOW! Streaming on all platforms and available for purchase. The album features a powerhouse rhythm section of Marc Cary, Nat Reeves, and Jeff “Tain” Watts.

Wayne Bergeron is enjoying a career as one of the most sought-after musicians in the world. Studio sessions, film dates, international touring, jazz concerts, guest appearances, and clinics keep him busy not only in his hometown of Los Angeles but worldwide.

Bergeron first caught the ear of many when he landed the lead trumpet chair with Maynard Ferguson’s band in 1986. Bergeron demonstrates daily why Maynard remarked, “Wayne is the most musical lead trumpet player I’ve had on my band.”

As a sideman, Bergeron’s list of recording credits reads like a “who’s who” in contemporary jazz and pop, running the stylistic gamut from Ray Charles to Green Day. Other names include Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Barbra Streisand, Michael Buble, Indina Menzel, Leslie Oden Jr, Natalie Cole, Celine Dion, Seal, Diana Krall, Christina Aguilera, Dianne Reeves, The Mars Volta, Rosemary Cloony, Diane Schuur, Barry Manilow, Kenny G., and David Benoit.

Bergeron has worked on over 500 TV & motion picture soundtracks. A partial list of film credits includes Red Notice, Turning Red, Soul, Bob’s Burgers, Ford vs. Ferrari, Toy Story 4, Frozen 1 & 2, The Lion King (2019), The Secret Life of Pets, Crazy Rich Asians, Sing 1&2, Moana, Frozen 1 & 2, Toy Story 3, High School Musical 3, Superman Returns, The Simpson’s Movie, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, Spiderman 1 & 2, Team America and South Park.

Bergeron’s featured trumpet solos can be heard on the motion pictures West Side Story (2021 Steven Spielberg),La La Land, Sing, The Incredibles 1 & 2, Rocky Balboa, The Secret Life of Pets 2, Minions, Minions 2:The Rise of Gru, Spies in Disguise, Jersey Boys, Despicable Me, Aladdin King of Thieves, and many others.

Numerous TV credits include Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, SAG Awards, NBC, ESPN & TNT sports themes, Grammy Awards, Animaniacs Reboot, Family Guy, American Dad, Simpson’s, Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, America’s Funniest Home Videos, Phineas & Ferb, House of Mouse, Buzz Lightyear, and Hey Arnold.

Bergeron’s greatest love is playing lead in big bands. He has recorded and played with some of Los Angeles’ most respected bands including Quincy Jones, Gordon Goodwin, Pat Williams, Sammy Nestico, Jack Sheldon, Chris Walden, Tom Kubis, and Bob Florence.

After being behind the scene for so many years, Bergeron stepped out on his own with his first solo effort, You Call This a Living? This debut project earned him a Grammy nomination in 2004 for Best Large Jazz Ensemble, as well as rave reviews from fans and press worldwide. Bergeron’s second CD, Plays Well With Others, released on the Concord Jazz label in 2007, was met with the same acclaim. Bergeron’s most current CD, Full Circle, was released in January of 2016.

Bergeron performs various events for the Hollywood Bowl summer season. He has done guest appearances with the L.A. Philharmonic, The New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Taiwan Symphony, and Tokyo Philharmonic.

Bergeron is a National Artist for the Yamaha Corporation of America and is co-designer of the YTR-8335LA trumpet and YFH-8315G Flugelhorn.

Bergeron was mentored by legends Uan Rasey, Bobby Shew, Warren Luening, Gary Grant, and George Graham. Bergeron hopes to inspire a new generation of young players and enjoys his work as a clinician and educator. “Nothing makes me feel more accomplished than hearing a young musician say that I inspired them or had a positive influence on their life. For me, that’s the real payday.

Perhaps Grammy winning composer and bandleader, Gordon Goodwin said it best, “Wayne is a once in a lifetime lead trumpet player.”