Jazz Festival

Matthew Whitaker’s musical journey began at age three with a keyboard gift from his grandfather. He is now a celebrated artist, captivating audiences globally and appearing on notable television shows like Showtime at the Apollo, The Today Show, Ellen, and a feature on 60 Minutes. 

Whitaker is a versatile artist; he produced, scored, and starred in the All-Arts Emmy-nominated documentary About Tomorrow, and he scored the film Starkeisha, which is currently streaming on Hulu. He also appeared in and contributed music to the Emmy-winning Apple TV commercial The Greatest. Whitaker made his director debut for the award-winning musical Billy Strayhorn: Something to Live For, on the life of pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn, which premiered in Pittsburgh, PA in 2023. Whitaker has appeared as guest soloist with Aspen Chamber Symphony, under the baton of guest conductor, Marin Alsop, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, CN, under Alexander Shelley. He also composed a song for the 82-piece Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, in Sofia, Bulgaria, which was included in the documentary About Tomorrow. 

Whitaker believes that music connects us all and that every child should have access to music education. Beyond music, he advocates for persons with disabilities, consulting with companies to improve accessibility features. 

He is a three-time ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Award winner, with three studio albums as a leader: Outta The Box, Now Hear This, and Connections. His fourth recording, On Their Shoulders: An Organ Tribute, an homage to some of Whitaker’s heroes on the instrument, will debut in early Summer 2024. He has collaborated with industry greats like bassist, composer, and producer Derrick Hodge; pianist, composer, and musical director Ray Chew; pianist, multiple Grammy-winning composer, vocalist, and band leader Jon Batiste; Grammy-winning bassist Christian McBride; and NEA Jazz Master, violinist Regina Carter. 

To learn more about Matthew Whitaker, please visit his website.  

Is it fair to call Julius Rodriguez and the community of young artists he works with jazz’s new vanguard? The 23-year-old musician does not bristle at that four-letter word the way many of his colleagues who practice great Black American Music do. Having studied jazz since childhood, attending its prominent youth programs and learning institutions while developing a playing dexterity and a composer’s ear for its blues-, spirituals-, and ballad-related cornerstones, Julius recognizes jazz’s cultural value and the processes that further its prestige as America’s classical music. But what becomes abundantly apparent from listening to Let Sound Tell All, Rodriguez’s debut album, is that, schooled though he may be in jazz’s conventions, Julius doesn’t believe in the limitations by which jazz’s guardians have come to define it.

When you hear Julius Rodriguez play “the music,” as he calls it, it’s a modern Sound, as fluent in history as it is aware of its contemporary context. His music dares to imagine a future of new standards and sonic excitement. This vanguard was raised in an atmosphere where pop and hip-hop and dance influenced their approaches to melody and harmony and rhythm, so of course it is part of their improvisational DNA. And that’s what Julius Rodriguez’s Sound tells to whoever will choose to listen.

On some level, this open-mindedness has been a part of Julius Rodriguez’s approach for much of his young life. Even creative eclecticism must have its seeds, and Julius’ were planted via interest from Audrey McCallum, a historic figure at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory (she was the first African-American student at its preparatory high school in the ’50s) and a beloved music teacher at Charm City’s public schools. McCallum was also friends with the Rodriguez family, and it was upon her recommendation that young Julius began taking classical piano lessons at age three, developing a strong music-theory foundation. This instruction was put to action at the Greenburgh, NY church that the Rodriguez family attended, which was where Julius would play all manner of keyboards (including the organ) and drums from a young age.

As Julius was revealing a deep musical aptitude, his father, Adlher, a jazz fan attuned to legends like Coltrane and Monk and contemporaries like Earl Klugh and Stanley Jordan, became deeply involved in his son’s musical education — going so far as shepherding his then-11-year-old son to a 1:00am jam session at Greenwich Village’s famed Smalls club, upon discovering that Jeremy Manasia, Julius’ soon-to-be piano instructor at Manhattan School of Music’s youth program, would be performing there. (Julius says he wore a gray hoodie and played Duke Ellington’s “Take the A Train,” and adds “that was my song!”). It was also the beginning of the younger Rodriguez’s love for jazz clubs, which he’s been haunting regularly ever since.

High school at the progressive Masters School in Dobbs Ferry was augmented with time spent at such lauded music programs as MSM’s and Berklee’s, and that of the YoungArts Foundation, while also playing youth recitals and gigs. It’s in this milieux that Julius first found himself around inspirational young musicians, like bassist Darryl Johns (who appears on Let Sound Tell All), and saxophonist Isaiah Barr (whose group Onyx Collective has been instrumental in Rodriguez’s evolving musical mindset). He wound up at Juilliard with other members of the generational vanguard — Julius’ roommates in his first Manhattan apartment were his current bass player Philip Norris, pianist Isaiah Thompson and saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins — but left the school’s strictly tradition-minded program in 2018.

Thinking about his music’s progress in retrospect, Rodriguez remembers “a perfect backhanded compliment” from drummer Terri Lynne Carrington during a five-week stint at Berklee’s summer program, that proved crucial: “She said, ‘When we played that last tune, for a minute there, it sounded like Art Blakey came down from heaven.’ But then she added, ‘That’s not all there is — you can’t get tied up in the tradition.’ It made me consider what I was focusing on, and what I was maybe leaving out. That’s the moment I think about to this day: you can’t get tied up in tradition, you gotta expand.”

In some ways, this expansion was as ever-present as his orthodox music education. Alongside jazz, Stevie Wonder and the Beatles were omnipresent on the Rodriguez family stereo; and as Julius omnivored the Internet for musical discoveries, he heard jazz pianists like Jacky Terrason and The Bad Plus’ Ethan Iverson spin their own version of contemporary repertoire, pop and otherwise. When Julius was in his early teens he went to New York’s Governors Ball festival with friends, an event that he says “kind of changed my life. I was used to jazz concerts, things that don’t normally happen on a large scale. So to see musicians playing in front of so many people who were excited to be there, that flipped the switch like, ‘Maybe I should look into these other kinds of music.” He started listening to James Blake, Sampha and Solange; and at the Masters School, began participating in an annual concert students would produce by recreating a classic album, learning everything about Michael Jackson’s Thriller and U2’s Joshua Tree. His jazz professors also encouraged him to stretch out, as when Manasia introduced him to Shuggie Otis.

Rodriguez was always playing with singer-songwriters and other musicians outside his youth jazz circles. When he got to Juilliard, he began playing with music students from other New York universities; and with his old friend Isaiah Barr’s Onyx Collective, whose Lower East Side reputation as a young group equally comfortable with indie-rock and hip-hop, with standards and rare grooves, made fans of downtown jazzers like Roy Nathanson and Marc Ribot, but also A$AP Rocky. (The platinum rapper hired them as his band on a 2018 tour, which made Rodriguez take a semester off of Juilliard and precipitated his leaving school). By early 2019, the breadth and nous of Julius’ work pointed towards eclecticism: he played organ for Me’shell Ndegeocello and the hip-hop production duo Brasstracks; piano on Carmen Lundy’s Grammy-nominated vocals album, Modern Ancestors; contributed to recordings by other vanguard non-traditionalists such as Morgan Guerin and Kassa Overall; and led his own jazz group in clubs around town. Additionally, his working musician acumen was getting sharper. Even within the jazz community, he’d recognize how clubs and their patrons differentiated the music: “I observed how to play these spaces. You don’t go to all these places for the same kind of thing. I would play into that, see what I liked and didn’t like about it. Then my writing and music evolved and developed as I played in different spaces with different musicians.”

The more Rodriguez saw admired colleagues like Ndgeocello, Jon Batiste, saxophonist Braxton Cook, and singer-songwriter Gabriel Garzón-Montano embrace a variety of musical spaces, the more Carrington’s call for expansiveness made sense for the music he wanted to make. The earliest band recordings on Let Sound Tell All date back to 2017 — and all of them were completed by February 2019. At the time, Rodriguez says, the idea was to “document the group, the experimentation, and the aspirations we were coming up with at the live shows, because there was a certain energy.” But in the ensuing year, as Julius’ excitement of capturing the group’s sound in a studio evolved into a desire to create an interesting record — made practical once the pandemic arrived in 2020 and the idea of gathering in a recording studio was no longer feasible — those original tapes became framework for a different kind of study. One that took on the many different musical lessons and directions that had excited Julius much of his life. With the help of producer/engineer Drew ofthe Drew, who would add a studio-based post-producer/sonic alchemist’s ear, a wonderful set of songs began to take shape. At times, Let Sound Tell All harkens to the small-group classic jazz that was locus to much of Julius’ upbringing; at others, it sounds contemporary and sleek as all get-out.

The opening “Blues at the Barn,” originally released as a single in 2020, was a perfect encapsulation of how both ideas could live together. An upbeat piano-trio traditional that has been a group live favorite, it opens the album with crowd applause that sounds like it was very specifically lifted from an older live jazz recording in front of a sizable audience; upright bassist Norris tugs at the strings in a “let’s start now” fashion, Rodriguez bangs out the theme, and drummer Joe Saylor joins in. On the recording, the whole band passes through one of Drew’s filters, and comes out the other side crisp and swinging. The song’s traditionalism is given spotlight by the production process, but also gets modernized before the listener’s very ears.

The bones of “Gift of the Moon” were among the album’s earliest tapes; Rodriguez calls it “the first song I wrote that wasn’t a traditional jazz song, since there’s no solo section.” He struggled for years trying to figure out what to do with it, until in 2019 he asked trumpeter Giveton Gelin to solo over the existing recording. Rodriguez couldn’t pick any of Gelin’s three takes, “so I used all of them at the same time, and it turned into what it is now,” a trick he picked up from George Martin and his youthful idolization of The Beatles’ studio hacks — as well as from Roy Hargrove’s recordings where the late trumpeter would play with himself. The addition of Julius’ synth parts and a wordless vocal from Onyx compadre Nick Hakim created a stunning instrumental miniature.

Ideas for some of Sound‘s songs, on the other hand, were years in the making. Or at least its collaborative relationships were. Mariah Cameron, who sings the cover of Stevie Wonder’s “All I Do,” is an “old friend from back home in White Plains.” The song’s arrangement is not a flip of the take Stevie did on 1980’s Hotter Than July, but its original Motown version recorded by Tammi Terrell in 1966. No wonder then that for bass Julius brought on Ben Wolfe, one of his Juilliard professors who once played with Wynton Marsalis and the Harry Connick Jr. Orchestra (“When Harry Met Sally [soundtrack] is a desert island disc for me,” he says). The song’s old-school swinging backbeat is all the better for it.

And the downtempo “Where Grace Abounds,” allows Rodriguez to engage his profound spiritual side, a kind of duet between Rodriguez on electric piano and Hammond B-3 organ — before Gelin’s trumpet and Hakim’s voice arrive as late-in-the-song punctuations. For Julius, it is one of the album’s most self-reflective compositions, “a song I wrote at a time where I felt like I wasn’t being the best version of myself yet, and still a lot of great things were happening to me. So it’s me being grateful for being in the situation I’m in, even though I felt like I didn’t deserve it.” Drew ofthe Drew and Jon Castelli mix it into a ghostly, gospel-like wonder.

Taken together, Let Sound Tell All is a singular expression of the in-betweens that materialize in today’s musical spaces. For Julius and the vanguard, it’s less a digital dissolution of genres we often read about, than a thoughtful realignment of tradition by a generation who hears disparate things fitting together in a way their elders can not. They aren’t sure what to call it, or where it fits, but they know it’s important for the world to hear it and to have it.

“My music is improvisation based…but it’s influenced by a lot of other things too,” Julius says when asked that, if not jazz, what should we call his sound. “At one point I was calling it ‘jazz pop songs’ — it’s simpler melodies, shorter songs, shorter arrangements, but we were still soloing and playing jazz language over it. It’s just music that I write, influenced by all the things going on around me. Contemporary instrumental music. But it’s funny when you say something like that, people assume you’re gonna play some weird out/neoclassical [stuff]. No, you can improvise some simple things that people can sing back and dance through too. That’s what I wanna do. I feel like that’s one of the reasons why we don’t have a lot of instrumentalists in pop culture and at the forefront, because people just aren’t doing it.”

Bruce Harris is an exceptional musician and trumpet player who fearlessly explores the boundaries of contemporary music within the legendary jazz scene of New York City. With a deep-rooted appreciation for tradition and a penchant for innovative ideas, Harris effortlessly juggles multiple roles as a musician, trumpeter, curator, mentor, and educator.

A Bronx native, he spent his formative years in the thriving musical landscape of 1980s New York City. Growing up amidst the epicenter of the Hip-hop era, he was also exposed to the echoes of the influential Be-bop era, which holds a significant place in the city’s musical heritage. Surrounded by music at all times, Harris sought a means of self-expression and found it in the trumpet. At the age of 12, he began emulating and absorbing the works of his inspirations, including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Marvin Gaye, and Prince.

During his high school years, Harris’s talent earned him a remarkable opportunity to perform alongside the renowned trumpeter, educator, and musical historian Wynton Marsalis through the “Essentially Ellington” jazz band competition. This experience further fueled his passion for music. Harris pursued his education in jazz performance by studying under the tutelage of trumpet virtuoso Jon Faddis at the Conservatory of Music in SUNY Purchase College, where he successfully obtained both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree.

Bruce Harris, as a performer, has established a professional career defined by his contagious joy, unwavering passion, and youthful energy. He has honed his skills and delighted audiences in some of New York’s most prestigious music venues and jazz clubs, including Smalls, Smoke Jazz Club, Dizzy’s Club, Ginny’s Supper Club, Minton’s, and Rockwood Music Hall. Harris’s talents have also graced national television, with appearances on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. In addition, he has showcased his abilities in two Broadway productions: After Midnight (2013) and Shuffle Along (2016).

Throughout his career, Harris has had the privilege of sharing the stage with an illustrious roster of legendary performers and artists. This includes memorable collaborations with Wynton Marsalis & the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor, The Count Basie Orchestra, Barry Harris, Roy Hargrove, Tony Bennett, Fantasia Barrino, Patti Labelle, Audra McDonald, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Steve Martin, Seth MacFarlane, Prairie Home Companion, Harry Connick Jr., and many more.

As an accomplished recording artist, Bruce Harris has showcased his talent and leadership on two albums to date. His debut album, “Beginnings,” was released under the Posi-tone label. Additionally, Harris contributed his musical prowess to the album “Soundview,” which was released under the labels Cellar Live and La Reverse Records. In 2022, Harris co-led an album alongside saxophonist Grant Stewart titled “The Lighting of The Lamp,” also released under Cellar Live or La Reverse Records.

These albums feature an impressive lineup of collaborative musicians, including Sullivan Fortner, Samara Joy, David Wong, Aaron Kimmel, Clovis Nicholas, Jerry Weldon, Michael Weiss, and others. Harris’s musical journey has led him to sign with Equitone Records, and he is currently working on a tribute album dedicated to his mentor, Barry Harris. The tribute album is expected to be released in the fall in collaboration with Ehud Asherie, marking Harris’s third solo project. 

Currently, Bruce Harris continues to be a prominent figure in the vibrant music scene of New York City. Alongside his global tours as a freelance trumpet player and bandleader, he is eagerly looking forward to his upcoming performance at the renowned Newport Jazz Festival, where he will pay homage to the legendary Louis Armstrong. As he gets ready for the grand event, Harris diligently practices on his trusted Lotus Trumpets, grateful for his endorsement with the esteemed brand.

Equally at home in an orchestra or a jazz club, Boston-based harpist Charles Overton aims to create a musical environment that is accessible, exciting, and resonates deeply with audiences.  

Originally from Richmond, VA, he began his musical journey with formative experiences with the American Youth Harp Ensemble and the Interlochen Arts Academy before moving to Boston in 2012 to expand his musical horizons at the Berklee College of Music.  During his studies he became immersed in the world of jazz and improvised music, owing much of his outlook on music to lessons from the renowned artist-faculty of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute.

Overton performs frequently with the Boston Symphony as both a second and substitute harpist, and highlights in chamber music include concerts with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia, and several summers performing at the Yellow Barn Summer Music Festival.  An avid jazz musician, he performs regularly in venues across the northeast as a band leader and internationally in collaboration with such artists as Shabaka Hutchings, Ganavya Doraiswamy, and Esperanza Spalding 

Overton serves on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Italian jazz pianist and singer Francesca Tandoi has been hailed by critics and peers as a rising jazz star and one of the most enthralling young talents on the international jazz scene. She studied jazz piano and singing at the prestigious Royal Conservatory of The Hague, graduating cum laude and with a special mention from the committee and later on she earned her master’s degree from Codarts Conservatory and the University of Arts in Rotterdam.

In just a few short years, she has earned international acclaim as a world-class pianist and vocalist. She has performed with some of the finest international jazz musicians, to name a few: Scott Hamilton, Philip Harper, Owen Hart Jr., Joe Cohn, Anthony Pinciotti, Jason Brown, Daryll Hall, Lee Pearson, Darius Brubeck, Dave Blankhorn, Florin Nicolescu, Marjorie Barnes, Sergey Manukyan and many more. 

She got invited by Micheal League to join the “Snarky Puppy” during their concert at Umbria Jazz 2023. She has toured and performed at some of the most noteworthy theatres, jazz festivals, and clubs around the world like The North Sea Jazz Festival,  Umbria Jazz,  Cork Jazz, Bosendorfer piano gala, Breda Jazz,  Amsterdam Arena Stadium, and many others in USA, Japan, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, Israel and literally everywhere in Europe. 

Tandoi’s trio’s performances have been warmly received by audiences and the press. Her stage presence is praised time and again as an explosion of swing, strong and sophisticated. Jazz journalist David Alston of South Africa said, “She has a flawless technique and the ability to swing like the greats. The audience is simply knocked out by her playing.”

“Francesca Tandoi has truly impressive piano skills,” raved Dutch magazine JazzFlits. “She literally flies over the keyboard. And she’s blessed with a beautiful singing voice full of warmth and sensuality.”

In addition to calling her singing ballads “exemplary, actually unforgettable,” jazz journalist Massimo Tarabelli (Ancona Jazz, IT) places her among the greats: “How many of the world’s young pianists resonate with the greatest virtuoso swinging jazz pianists—Oscar Peterson, Monty Alexander, Gene Harris, Phineas Newborn? Not many. How many of those are women? Very, very few. How many of those are Italian? Probably none. It’s incredible but true that such a person exists, and her name is Francesca Tandoi. She’s a brilliant, superior, and very rare talent.”

Well-known pianists Monty Alexander said, “Francesca Tandoi is a supremely tasteful swinging piano player. Her vocals are exquisite, her compositions are melodic and memorable, and her arrangements are extremely thoughtful.”

She appears in more than 20 recordings as a sideman, three with legendary American saxophonist Scott Hamilton. During the last couple of years, she got invited by Washington University of Music of Saint Louis (USA), Music University of Pretoria (South Africa), Ethics of Jazz in Moscow (Russia) and many other schools and Universities all around Europe and she’s a steady teacher at the Conservatory G.Martini of Bologna (IT)

Ekep Nkwelle, a 24-year-old Cameroonian-American jazz vocalist, has carved her musical path from the vibrant streets of Washington, DC, to the heart of New York City’s jazz scene. Her journey through the esteemed Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Howard University, and The Juilliard School has been extraordinary.

The power of her voice has resonated with jazz luminaries such as Russell Malone, Cyrus Chestnut, and Peter Washington, along with young stars like Emmet Cohen and Endea Owens, leading to countless collaborations. Her performances have graced iconic venues nationwide, from the illustrious Radio City Music Hall, where she shared the stage with classical virtuoso Lang Lang in collaboration with Disney, to The Library of Congress, Blues Alley, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and The Strathmore. Her presence has also illuminated major festivals, including Newport, Montclair, Hudson, and DC jazz festivals.

The year 2023 marked a pinnacle in Ekep’s career as she was honored with the prestigious Juilliard Career Advancement Grant, a testament to her artistry and character, nominated by none other than jazz master trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. This recognition followed her enchanting performance on NPR’s “Tiny Desk,” showcasing her unique arrangement of Geri Allen’s “Timeless Portraits & Dreams” in 2022. Continuing her ascent, Ekep collaborated with the illustrious 3x GRAMMY and Tony award-winner Dee Dee Bridgewater during the fourth year of her exclusive, all-women artistic residency, The Woodshed Network.

As one of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s newest rising stars, Ekep Nkwelle is poised to shape the future of jazz. With a burning passion for music, her artistry knows no bounds as she endeavors to share her soulful melodies with audiences worldwide.