Carnegie Hall

Grammy-winning pianist and composer Alex Brown is at the forefront of a new generation of artists. The New York Times says he plays “with a crystalline touch and a worldly approach.” In 2021, he released his second album as a leader, The Dark Fire Sessions. He has performed on and contributed music to Grammy-winning and -nominated albums with artists that include Imani Winds, Harlem Quartet, Paquito D’Rivera, Dafnis Prieto, and Brian Lynch. A member of D’Rivera’s regular group since 2007, Brown has also collaborated with artists in a wide array of genres that include Valerie Coleman, Sean Jones, Cho-Liang Lin, Yo-Yo Ma, Armando Manzanero, Christian McBride, the New York Voices, David Sánchez, David Shifrin, Chris Thile (on the former American variety show Live from Here), Warren Wolf, and Miguel Zenón. In 2016, he performed Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as a soloist with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería led by conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto in Mexico City.

As a composer and arranger, Brown has had music performed by premier groups that include The Philadelphia Orchestra and members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In 2023, he wrote the string quartet arrangements for Kendrick Scott’s composition Unearthed featuring the Harlem Quartet. In 2022 and 2023, he collaborated with rapper Andre Nickatina in a project reimagining Nickatina’s music for orchestra. He has completed big-band commissions for Bobby Broom and the Chicago Jazz Orchestra as well as Chad Lefkowitz-Brown and the Global Big Band. He earned his bachelor’s degree in jazz performance at the New England Conservatory and his master’s degree in studio jazz composition at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. He currently serves as a visiting artist in jazz studies at the Peabody Institute, part of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is a Yamaha artist.

Luques Curtis was born in 1983 in Hartford, Connecticut. Following formal training on piano and percussion, he studied bass at the Greater Hartford Academy of Performing Arts, Artist Collective, and with Dave Santoro, Volcan Orham, Nat Reeves, and Paul Brown. While attending high school, he also studied the Afro-Caribbean genre with bass greats Andy Gonzalez and Joe Santiago, and he earned a full scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. He currently lives in the New York area.

Curtis has performed worldwide with artists who include Eddie Palmieri, Stefon Harris, Christian Scott, Sean Jones, Orrin Evans, and Christian Sands. He was the recipient of DownBeat’s 2016 Rising Star Bassist award from its Critics Poll, and also received the Ralph Bunche Fellowship, allowing him to complete his master’s degree at the Mason Gross School of the Arts. With his brother, Zaccai, he co-founded a record label called Truth Revolution Records, and they have released five albums under the name “Curtis Brothers,” the most recent being Algorithm. Curtis performed on Brian Lynch’s Grammy-winning CD Simpatico and his Grammy-nominated Madera Latino, as well as on Christian Scott’s Grammy-nominated CD Rewind That; in addition, he produced Andy Gonzalez’s Grammy-nominated recording Entre Colegas. As a sideman, Curtis has performed on more than 100 recordings, including Eddie Palmieri’s Sabiduria and Mi Luz Mayor, Gary Burton’s Next Generations, Dave Valentin’s Come Fly with Me, and Sean Jones’s Im*pro*vise, Roots, Kaleidoscope, and The Search Within.

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, DIVA Jazz Orchestra, Michel Camilo Big Band, and Rufus Reid Large Ensemble, among others. She has performed and toured with such artists as Dianne Reeves, Clark Terry, Jon Faddis, Paquito D’Rivera, and Gladys Knight, and with ensembles that include the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Count Basie Orchestra, Ron Carter Great Big Band, Duke Ellington Orchestra, and Mingus Big Band. She has appeared on the television show BET on Jazz as part of the T.S. Monk Sextet, and performed with Aretha Franklin as part of the Arista Records’ 25th Year Anniversary Special on NBC.

Darby’s accomplishments as a lead trumpet player keep her in demand. She has played lead in numerous bands, including Paquito D’Rivera and the United Nations Orchestra, Count Basie Orchestra, George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, Manhattan Jazz Orchestra, and Jimmy Heath’s Queens Jazz Orchestra, among many others. She is currently chair of the brass department at Berklee College of Music, and she formerly served as assistant professor of lead trumpet at the University of North Texas and as an adjunct faculty member at Temple University and The New School in New York City. She regularly performs at master classes and has served as a clinician and adjudicator at numerous festivals in the US and abroad.

Over the past 20 years, Marshall Gilkes has established himself as one of the world’s preeminent trombonists. His virtuosic command of the instrument—marked by a warm and enveloping tone, Herculean chops, astounding flexibility, and awe-inspiring range—places him in a league of his own. Since 2004, Gilkes has released eight albums, which feature a variety of combinations that include the compact trio, quartet and quintet formats, merging of brass octet and jazz combo, and big band. Drawing heavy praise, including a pair of Grammy nominations, he has cemented his reputation as a composer and bandleader. In addition, with his work as a first-call sideman, Gilkes continuously demonstrates incomparable might and adaptability. His lengthy résumé includes work performing and/or recording with artists who include bassist Carlos Henriquez, harpist Edmar Castañeda, Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Slide Monsters, bassist Richard Bona, pianist Makoto Ozone, and numerous other top-tier musicians and ensembles. He has worked extensively with the WDR Big Band and is a longtime member of the Maria Schneider Orchestra.

Gilkes’s vast experience and genre-straddling skills have made him an in-demand educator. At various points in his career, he has served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee College of Music, and New England Conservatory. In addition, he has shared his knowledge and skills through master classes, clinics, guest appearances, and teaching at institutions that include the Banff Center, University of North Texas, Brubeck Institute, Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music, and New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. An S.E. Shires Artist, Gilkes performs on his signature model trombone—an instrument as versatile as its inspiration.

Multi-instrumentalist and educator Erica von Kleist has led many lives as a musician and producer, leading the charge as woodwind specialist, educator, and entrepreneur. After receiving the first jazz bachelor’s degree in the history of The Juilliard School, she went on to tour and record with Sean Jones, Wynton Marsalis, and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz Orchestra, and spent time working on Broadway. As a bandleader, she has released five albums, most recently Sax & Taps with DeWitt Fleming Jr, live at Dizzy’s Club. In 2012, she relocated from New York City to Montana, where she began several business initiatives while also publishing a jazz theory curriculum for beginning improvisers. In addition to being a force in the jazz performance and education world, she has penned a musical comedy show, a musical, and a film. She was recently appointed managing director of the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers, and now that she’s back in New York, has become a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music.

New York City–based drummer, composer, and teacher Allison Miller engages her deep roots in improvisation as a vehicle to explore all music. Described by critics as a modern jazz icon in the making, she won Downbeat’s 67th Annual Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer and JazzTimes’s 2019 Critics Poll for Best Jazz Drummer. Boom Tic Boom, her longtime band, won Jazz Journalists Association’s 2019 Award for Best Mid-Sized Ensemble. Her composition, “Otis Was a Polar Bear,” is included on NPR’s list of the 200 greatest songs by 21st-century women.

Miller, a three-time jazz ambassador for the US State Department, was Monterey Jazz Festival’s 2019 artist-in-residence, alongside bassist/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 in many Best Jazz of 2019 lists, including those of NPR, Rolling Stone, and JazzTimes. While breaking from leading Boom Tic Boom, she focuses on collaborations, codirecting Parlour Game with Jenny Scheinman and Science Fair with Carmen Staaf. Parlour Game’s debut album also made Best Jazz of 2019 lists, including those of the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Nation, and was recently featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition. She is also a proud member of the critically acclaimed Blue Note recording supergroup Artemis and is the musical director for Camille A. Brown’s Ink.

Miller teaches jazz and contemporary music at The New School (where she was recently named a Melba Liston Fellow), Stanford Jazz Workshop, Centrum, Geri Allen Jazz Camp, and is the artistic director of Jazz Camp West. She has been appointed Arts Envoy to Thailand for her work with Jazz Education Abroad and endorses Yamaha drums, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth heads, Evans drumheads, and Sunhouse percussion.

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 a sideman with artists who include Hamiet Bluiett, Ann Hampton Callaway, and the Carl Allen / Rodney Whitaker Ensemble. He has performed as an accompanist with the Count Basie Orchestra at the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, and has appeared at collegiate jazz festivals around the country, including those at Lawrence University, University of South Florida, and Texas Tech University. He has performed internationally in Tokyo, Bangkok, Macau, Jakarta, Calgary, Milan, Warsaw, Poznań, Senegal, and London. His recordings, which feature collaborations with Clay Jenkins, Kim Richmond, and Clark Terry / Mike Vax, include Matters of the Heart (MRT Jazz), Fade to Blue (MaxJazz), and Standard Time (Victoria), and he can also be heard on 4 (Jazz Compass) and Better Than Alright with Michigan State University’s Professors of Jazz. He has been awarded the Excellence in the Arts award from the Greater St. Louis Arts and Education Council, and was named Best Jazz Artist in the Riverfront Times’s “Best of St. Louis” issue in 2005.

Thomas has served as a professor of music at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and professor or jazz piano at Michigan State University. He currently leads the Northern Illinois University School of Music’s jazz studies program, works as a consultant and clinician for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington Program and Band Director Academy, and serves on summer jazz faculties at institutions that include the International Association for Jazz Education, Birch Creek Music Center, Eastman School of Music’s Summer Jazz Camp, Summer Jazz Academy in Chodzież (Poland), and London’s Barbican Centre. He has directed all-state jazz bands, combos, and jazz choirs in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, South Dakota, and Tennessee.

Growing up in Akron, Ohio, Dan Wilson spent the majority of 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 through 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, he made his recording debut with pianist Joe McBride and performed to worldwide acclaim with Joey DeFrancesco and Christian McBride’s Tip City, eventually recording his debut as a leader on To Whom It May Concern. 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. His career took him on an exploratory journey into foundations laid down by the guitar/organ tradition, eventually leading to an invitation to perform with jazz great Joey DeFrancesco’s ensemble, with which Wilson went on to earn a Grammy Award nomination for DeFrancesco’s Project Freedom album (Mack Avenue Records, 2017). He had been playing with DeFrancesco for a few years when he met bassist, composer, and arranger Christian McBride. From there, Wilson went on tour with McBride’s trio Tip City, eventually leading McBride to serve as producer on Vessels of Wood and Earth, released on Brother Mister Productions through Mack Avenue Music Group in 2021. In 2023, he released his fourth album, Things Eternal, on Brother Mister / Mack Avenue Records. The album received critical acclaim worldwide and led to the quartet touring major festivals in the US and abroad.