News

1999 piano alum Zaccai Curtis is a featured artist in an April 30 event at the Atlantic BKLN in Brooklyn NY celebrating the historic New York City mambo era at the Palladium Ballroom. The event is comprised of a panel discussion, dance instruction, and live music by Mitch Frohman & the Bronx Horns. Saxophonist/flutist Frohman had a 25-year stint with the Tito Puente Orchestra and was a member of the Mongo Santamaria band, both of which helped fuel the Palladium’s mambo craze in the late 1940s and 1950s. Curtis and his 2000 bass alum brother Luques Curtis had recorded previously with Frohman; check them out in this video of Frohman’s Latin Jazz Quartet in 2013 performing “From Daddy With Love,” the title of his then forthcoming album.

Isaiah J. Thompson (2014 piano) has a two-night gig with The John Pizzarelli Trio at Café Carlyle in NYC April 27-28. Thompson performs with his own trio April 29-30 at Mezzrow Jazz Club in NYC before returning to the Carlyle with the Pizzarelli Trio May 1-7.

Chad Lefkowitz-Brown (2007 saxophone) embarks on an artist residency at SF Conservatory in San Francisco on April 27, and performs with the Neshaminy High School Jazz Festival in Langhorne PA on April 29.

2002 piano alum Sullivan Fortner performs at Chelsea Table + Stage in NYC on April 27, to benefit the Jazz Foundation of America’s Musicians’ Fund, which provides financial assistance to musicians in crisis. 

Fortner’s 2002 Workshop classmate Gerald Clayton (piano) appears with the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville TN, April 28-30, in a celebration of “Nat King Cole at 100.”

2008 trumpet alum Benny Benack III performs in two different NYC venues on April 27 – an evening quintet show at The Django, and a late-night jam session at Smalls. Benack stages a free concert, “Bebop Into the Bayfest with Benny Benack III,” on April 28 at the Gateway Playhouse in Somers Point NJ. He then appears with a quartet at The Roxy Hotel in NYC on April 30, and is featured with New York Youth Symphony Jazz at The Times Center in NYC on May 9.

2007 saxophone alum Owen Broder performs with Cowboys & Frenchmen with Strings on April 29 at the Parish of St. Matthews in Pacific Palisades CA and on May 1 at The 1905 in Portland OR.

Vocalist Heidi Martin’s April 29 release of Gifts & Sacrifices features Josh Evans (2002) on trumpet.

Pianist Tigran Hamasyan releases his first jazz standards album, Stand Art, on April 29, and the album features a guest appearance by Ambrose Akinmusire (2000 trumpet) on two of the album’s tracks, “I Should Care” and “Invasion During an Operetta.”

Robert Glasper (1997 piano) special guests with the Nu Deco Ensemble, and presents a new work, at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami on April 30.

2005 bass alum Katie Thiroux and her band, with 2003 piano alum Justin Kauflin, perform straight-ahead jazz on April 30 at the Altitude Deck in Kihei, on the island of Maui HI, as part of the 2022 Maui Music Series’ “Tribute to Jazz Appreciation Month.” Thiroux is also helping coordinate jazz workshops there for local middle and high school students.

Pianist Jed Wilson (1998) backs author/musician Dave Kobrenski’s performance of a fusion of traditional West African music and contemporary jazz at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield ME on April 30.

Bassist Or Bareket releases Sahar on May 6, featuring Morgan Guerin (2014) on tenor sax, EWI, and organ and Jeremy Corren (2012) on piano and Fender Rhodes. Check out this pre-release trailer.

2014 trumpet alum Anthony Hervey performs with Sammy Miller and the Congregation Big Band at Dizzy’s Club in NYC, May 2-3; with singer John Batiste at Carnegie Hall in NYC on May 7; and with Svetlana and The New York Collective, along with Hervey’s 2013 Workshop colleague Jeffery Miller (trombone), for a Mothers Day Jazz Brunch at the Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC on May 8.

Saxophonist Tia Fuller (1996) takes the stage at the Orpheum Theatre during the Knox-Rootabaga Jazz Festival in Galesburg IL on May 7.

A “Purple Party” Prince tribute in New Orleans includes an all-star performance featuring 2004 saxophone alum Khris Royal to close out the New Orleans Jazz Fest 2022 at Maison on Frenchmen Street early in the morning of May 9.

Garret Lang (2006) plays bass on modern jazz reed player Steven Lugerner’s new album, It Takes One to Know One, with drumming legend Albert “Tootie” Heath. Listen to “The Big P.”

Saxophonist Roxy Coss’s new album, Disparate Parts, includes 2008 alum Jimmy Macbride on drums. Here’s the title track.