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Ravi Coltrane is a critically acclaimed Grammy^®-nominated saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Over the course of a 20-plus year career, Coltrane has worked as a sideman to many artists, and recorded noteworthy albums for himself and others. Born on Long Island, the second son of John and Alice Coltrane, Ravi was named after Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar. He was raised in Los Angeles, where his family moved after his father’s death in 1967. His mother was a significant influence on him, and it was Ravi who encouraged his mother to return to performing and the recording studio after a long absence. Subsequently, Coltrane produced and played on Alice’s album Translinear Light (2004). Additional credits include performances and recordings with Elvin Jones, Terence Blanchard, Kenny Baron, Steve Coleman, McCoy Tyner, Jack DeJohnette, Matt Garrison, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Geri Allen, Joanne Brackeem, The Blue Note 7, and more.

Coltrane lives in Brooklyn, NY and maintains a busy schedule touring, recording, and composing. He leads the effort to restore the John Coltrane Home in Dix Hills, Long Island and presides over important reissues of his father’s records.

Josh Evans grew up in Hartford, CT and studied with Jackie McLean. His is featured on more than 80 recordings and has played in bands with Rashied Ali, Benny Golson, Grachan Moncur, Billy Harper, Oliver Lake, Charles Tolliver, Joe Chambers, Rufus Reid, and Victor Lewis.

Sonia Sanchez is a poet; mother; professor; and international lecturer on Black culture and literature, women’s liberation, peace, and racial justice. Sanchez is a sponsor of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and is a board member of MADRE. She is the author of over 20 books including Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, Love Poems, I’ve Been a Woman, A Sound Investment and Other Stories, Homegirls and Handgrenades, Under a Soprano Sky, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Does Your House Have Lions?, Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums, Shake Loose My Skin, and most recently Morning Haiku.

Melvis Santa is an Afro-Cuban jazz vocalist, pianist, percussionist, and actress that has been wowing crowds at the biggest theaters in Havana since age seven. At 14, Santa put together a vocal ensemble that the great Chucho Valdés called “the best Cuban vocal quartet of the past 30 years.” Santa landed in New York in 2014 and immediately began working with the biggest names in jazz and Latin music. She is currently touring the world with NEA Jazz Master Kenny Garrett and has three projects of her own: Ashedí, all-female ensemble Ellas-Son, and Melvis Santa & Jazz Orishas—a multidimensional band which made their Newport Jazz Festival debut in 2023. Santa is a Brooklyn Conservatory of Music’s Jazz Leaders Fellow and has been commissioned as a composer by the New York City College’s Aaron Davis Hall and NYC Women’s Fund.

Pianist and composer David Virelles was raised in a musical family in Cuba, immersed in both the traditions of the Caribbean diaspora and Western classical music. Drawing from multiple traditions, he crafts a unique, syncretic style of music rather than simply blending elements or recreating past forms.

Virelles has collaborated with artists such as Henry Threadgill, Andrew Cyrille, Reggie Workman, Ravi Coltrane, Terri Lyne Carrington, Chris Potter, Milford Graves, Wadada Leo Smith, and Tomasz Stanko.

He has released a series of highly acclaimed albums on Pi, ECM, and Intakt.

Virelles’ awards include the Herb Alpert Award, Shifting Foundation fellowship, Canada Council, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Cristobal Díaz Ayala Grant, Aaron Copland Fund, Oscar Peterson Prize, and the CINTAS Fellowship. Currently, he is a professor at the Zürich University of the Arts and has lectured at CalArts, UCLA, the Amsterdam Conservatory, Paris University, and Harvard University.

Nasheet Waits is a New York native. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, the legendary percussionist Freddie Waits. Nasheet’s college education began at Morehouse in Atlanta, GA, where he studied psychology and history. He continued his education at Long Island University with Michael Carvin, whose tutelage built upon the foundation of influences from his father, mentor Max Roach, and percussionist Fred King. Waits joined Andrew Hill’s band through 2005, Fred Hersch’s band for 10 years, and toured with New Directions. Born from the New Directions was Jason Moran and the Bandwagon—a group with Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen—with seven albums and numerous performances over 20 years.  

Waits is also the leader of Equality, which since 2007 has featured talent such as Logan Richardson, Darius Jones, Jason Moran, Stanley Cowell, Craig Taborn, Aruan Ortiz, Tarus Mateen, John Hebert, and Mark Helias. Waits is the co-leader of the band Tarbaby with bassist Eric Revis and pianist Orrin Evans; 3rd Eye, a trio with tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton and drummer Eric McPherson; and Options with Eric Revis and Bennie Maupin.

Amidst his performing, recording, and touring, Waits teaches private lessons, stressing a personal approach to drums and music. He has been on the faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music since 2020. True to his personal philosophy of balancing tradition and modernism, Waits collaborates and performs regularly with musical cohorts, contemporaries, and masters.

Saul Williams came to public attention after the release of the film Slam (which he co-wrote and starred in), introducing the world to the Slam Poetry movement and winning Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D’Or in 1998.

As an actor, Williams was a series regular on Sivad, the CW’s Girlfriends and appeared in a handful of films including K-Pax, Lackawanna Blues, and New York, I Love You, Most recently, Saul starred in the French-Senegalese Aujord’hui TEY, which won 2013’s L’Etalon D’or at FESPACO—where Saul became the first African American to win Best Actor—and The Prize of the City at the Venice Film Festival. In 2014, Williams made his Broadway debut as the lead in Holler If Ya Hear Me, based on the lyrics and poetry of Tupac Shakur. Williams starred in the 2021 film Akilla’s Escape, which earned him a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Actor. His directorial debut Neptune Frost premiered at Cannes in 2021 and saw theatrical release in June 2022.

Williams has performed in over 30 countries read his poetry at over 300 universities, with invitations from institutions spanning from the White House, the Sydney Opera House, Lincoln Center, the Louvre, the Getty Center, Queen Elizabeth Hall and other villages, townships, community centers, and prisons worldwide. Williams has published five books of poetry which have been translated into several languages. Williams’s writings and lesson plans surrounding his work have been added to the curriculum of schools and universities worldwide.

As a musician, Williams has released six albums and toured or collaborated with artists including Kanye West, Nas, Janelle Monae, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, The Roots, Mos Def, The Mars Volta, David Cross, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Gil Scott-Heron, José James, Arthur H. Camille, Ayo, TV on the Radio, System of a Down, KRS ONE, DJ Krust, DJ Spooky, Cold Cut, Matisyahu, Blackalicious, K’naan, K-OS, and Erykah Badu.

Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz musician, vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Jackson, MS. Critic Gary Giddens described her as “a singer blessed with an unmistakable timbre and attack who has expanded the playing field” by incorporating blues, country, and folk music into her work.

Wilson began playing piano at six, guitar at age 12, and was working as a vocalist by the mid-1970s, singing a variety of material. After moving to New York City in the early ’80s, Wilson met saxophonist Steve Coleman and became one of the founding members of the M-Base Collective. After M-Base, Wilson signed with Blue Note Records in 1992 and released Blue Light ’Til Dawn, which would pave the way for a new generation of jazz singers seeking a repertoire that challenges the supremacy of the American Standard songbook.

Wilson’s honors and awards include two Grammys^®, the Django D’Or Award, the Edison Music Award, and a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail. Wilson also performed in one of the leading roles for Wynton Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields—the first jazz album to receive a Pulitzer Prize. In 2022, Wilson was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship and was named an NEA Jazz Master alongside Stanley Clarke, Billy Hart, and Donald Harrison.

Jordan Young is a saxophonist, composer, and arranger that has worked with Wallace Roney, Antoine Roney, Nia Love, Onaje Allen Gumbs, Lenny White, Craig Harris, Dick Griffin, Nasheet Waits, Darrell Green, and Damien Escobar. He has contributed music to Christina Kallas’s feature film Paris is in Harlem and scored numerous short films for filmmakers throughout the tri-state. Recently, his trio Y3W premiered the Queens Artist Fundawarded piece “In the Wake,” which featured his original digital art piece. Josh Evans grew up in Hartford, CT and studied with Jackie McLean. His is featured on more than 80 recordings and has played in bands with Rashied Ali, Benny Golson, Grachan Moncur, Billy Harper, Oliver Lake, Charles Tolliver, Joe Chambers, Rufus Reid, and Victor Lewis.