Dexter Williams is a jazz bassist based in San Francisco. His style is heavily informed by traditional jazz, swing, gypsy jazz, and bebop. He currently plays with a wide array of Bay Area musicians including the Hot Club of San Francisco, a touring jazz band emulating the style of Django Reinhardt. Dexter also works at Stanford University teaching and assisting with their jazz combos.
Based in Oakland, California, guitarist Jack Roben has performed across the country with artists and ensembles including Eric Reed, Gregory Tardy, Ed Soph, Taber Gable, Drew Zaremba, Sam Reider, Tom Amend, the University of North Texas One O’Clock Lab Band, and the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra.
Raised in the rich jazz scene of Seattle, Washington, Jack was taught the foundations of the music by his father, Andy, a jazz pianist and organist. He attended Edmonds-Woodway High School, where he was mentored by Jake Bergevin, a renowned educator in the area. Jack’s early accolades include membership in the 2013 NAFME All-Northwest Jazz Band and participating the 2013 Essentially Ellington competition at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Jack then moved to Denton, Texas to study at the University of North Texas, where he received a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies (2017). During his time at UNT Jack was a member of many ensembles including the Grammy nominated One O’Clock Lab Band, and is featured on the recording Lab 2017. Jack continued his studies at the University of Northern Colorado, where he received a Master of Music (2020) and was a Graduate Teaching Assistant. As a member of UNC Lab I, Jack participated in the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship at Jazz at Lincoln Center, where he received the “Outstanding Guitar” award.
In 2020 Jack relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee to become the Lecturer of Jazz Guitar at the University of Tennessee, where for three years he taught private lessons, jazz theory, jazz improvisation, graduate jazz seminar, and directed small ensembles.
Since returning to the West Coast in 2023, Jack has performed with musicians including Sam Reider, Giulio Xavier Cetto, Adam Shulman, Steven Lugerner, John Wiitala, Smith Dobson, and Michael Mitchell at venues including the Fillmore Jazz Festival, Stanford Jazz Festival, Mr. Tipple’s, Keys Jazz Bistro, Black Cat, and Golden Gate Park. He has continued to be an active educator working with the Stanford Jazz Workshop and in the Oakland Unified School District.
Colin Hogan was born in San Francisco, CA. He was a member of the world-renowned Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble while also studying with the Jazzschool’s founder, Susan Muscarella. He then attended Cal State East Bay (Hayward) where he earned a BA in piano performance.
Colin has performed on five continents and has performed with many legendary musicians including Larry Graham, Stanley Clarke, David Garibaldi, Lenny Pickett, Roy Ayers, James Moody, Ledisi, Too $hort, Peter Erskine, DJ Qbert, Kurt Elling, and Maria Schneider. Colin is currently involved in many projects including The Jazz Mafia, Mads Tolling and the Mads Men, The Alaya Project, Oakadelic, and The Hogan Brothers with brothers Steve and Julian. He currently lives in Oakland, CA.
Tyler Kaneshiro is a trumpeter, composer, and educator who has performed in major venues throughout North America and Europe. He is a San Francisco Bay Area native who moved to New York in 2008 to attend New York University and pursue his dream of playing jazz in the heart of Greenwich Village.
Kaneshiro has had the honor of sharing the stage and opening for such musicians as Bob Mintzer, Dave Pietro, Ralph Alessi, Brian Lynch, Marvin Stamm, Bill Mays, Ingrid Jensen, Roscoe Mitchell, CDZA, Macklemore, Snoop Dogg, Sinkane and has performed at several venues such as Lincoln Center, The Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club, The Highline Ballroom, The Jazz Gallery, The Blue Note in Milan, The Jazz Showcase in Chicago, Mass MoCA, YouTube Brandcast in New York, Google Conference in Las Vegas, Catalina’s Jazz Club in Los Angeles, SFJAZZ, San Jose Jazz Festival, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the Rochester International Jazz Festival among others.
Along with performing, he has composed music for film, theater, and podcasts. He is also a professional music copyist.
As an educator, Kaneshiro is a lecturer of Music Theory in the Department of Arts, Culture, & Media at Rutgers University – Newark and a faculty member of Express Newark. He is currently collaborating with Stefon Harris (Associate Professor of Music) to codify Harris’s unique approach to melody and harmony.
He was selected as a member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop’s Jazz Mentor Fellowship Program and continues to teach there every summer. He has also been a guest lecturer for the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.
Kaneshiro is featured in Dr. Thomas R. Erdmann’s book, How Jazz Trumpeters Play Music Today: Twelve Interviews on Technique, Style and Aesthetic. The book is a collection of interviews of trumpeters who reflect on the state of jazz and music in today’s world.
Obed Calvaire, a native of Miami and of Haitian descent is a graduate with both a master and bachelor degree of music from one of America’s premiere private music conservatories in the nation, Manhattan School of Music. He received his bachelor’s degree in 2003, completing the undergraduate degree requirements in three years and receiving his master’s in 2005.
Mr. Calvaire has performed and recorded with artists such as Wynton Marsalis, Seal, Eddie Palmeri, Vanessa Williams, Dave Holland, David Foster, Mary J. Blige, Stefon Harris, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Peter Cincotti, Music Soulchild, Nellie McKay, Yellow Jackets, Joshua Redman, Steve Turre, and Lizz Wright to name a few. He has also performed with large ensembles such as the Village Vanguard Orchestra, Metropole Orchestra, The Clayton Brothers, The Mingus Big Band, RoyHargrove big band, and the Bob Mintzer Big Band.
Currently, Obed Calvaire can be found playing with the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Dave Holland, Monty Alexander, Sean Jones, Yosvany Terry, Mike Stern among others.
Max Jaffe is a drummer, producer, composer, and technologist based in Los Angeles, CA. His work expands the possibilities of composition and collaboration through the drum set. In 2025, Jaffe released “You Want That Too!” on Colorfield Records. Eclectic and tuneful, the album received praise from Pitchfork and is being followed with a series of special live performances in varying formations.
Max is a founding member of experimental rock collective JOBS, Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones, and several others. He has toured, performed, and recorded with many diverse artists including Steph Richards, Nels Cline, Ava Mendoza, Brandon Lopez, DARKSIDE, David Binney, Jeff Parker, Vinny Golia, Nick Reinhart, Zach Tenorio, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Jessica Pavone, Chris Williams, Nicole McCabe, Logan Kane, Spencer Zahn, Meg Duffy, Daniel Rotem, Greg Uhlmann, Peter Evans, Simon Hanes, and many others.
From his beginnings as one of Chicago’s most thrilling young trumpeters, to his current status as an internationally renowned musician, composer and bandleader, Marquis Hill has worked tirelessly to break down the barriers that divide musical genres. Contemporary and classic jazz, hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house, neo-soul—to Hill, they’re all essential elements of the profound African-American creative heritage he’s a part of. “It all comes from the same tree,” he says. “They simply blossomed from different branches.”
That mission to bring styles together, complemented by Hill’s absolute mastery of his instrument, is a through line connecting his many achievements. It can be heard on his latest album, Modern Flows Vol. II, with its seamless blend of jazz interplay, hip-hop-infused rhythms and socially conscious spoken-word. It’s integral to The Way We Play, his Concord Jazz debut from 2016, where Hill and his musicians reinvent jazz standards using their generation’s wide- ranging influences. It marks the four records Hill self-released before November of 2014, when he won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz competition and became a presence on the global scene virtually overnight. And it defines the revelatory live dates by Hill’s longtime working group, the Blacktet, which the Chicago Tribune called “a remarkably polished, immensely attractive ensemble.”
For Hill, playing and listening without limits has long been an instinct. “It comes naturally; that’s the way I hear the music,” he says. “I came up in a household where my mom played Motown, R&B, Isley Brothers, Barry White, Marvin Gaye. Then I received my first jazz record, by Lee Morgan, and that was added to the collection. … I truly believe that the music is all the same.”
Born in Chicago in 1987 and raised on the city’s culturally rich South Side, Hill began playing drums at age 4, before switching to trumpet in the 6th grade. He attended high school at Kenwood Academy, excelling in its revered jazz-performance program, and was mentored by Bobby Broom, Willie Pickens, Tito Carrillo and other Chicago greats through the Ravinia Jazz Scholars program. Hill earned his bachelor’s in music education from Northern Illinois University and his master’s in jazz pedagogy from DePaul University. During college he made gigs and sessions around Chicago, jamming with and absorbing wisdom from the likes of Fred Anderson, Ernest Dawkins and Von Freeman. Even then, Hill was known in town as a stunningly gifted trumpeter with a soulful, highly textured tone. His sound is now somehow both deeply distinctive and a tour through jazz-trumpet history, evoking the high-drama stillness and space of Miles; the undeniable virtuosity of Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard; the groove- savvy phrasing of Lee Morgan and Donald Byrd; and much more.
Well before Hill won the Monk prize—arguably the most important jazz competition in the world—his reputation for brilliance was firmly established in the Midwest, as a member of the Chicago Jazz Orchestra, an in-demand sideman and a bandleader. He also developed into a precocious, determined young label owner, and has released five acclaimed discs—New Gospel,Sounds of the City, The Poet and Modern Flows Vols. I and II—through his Black Unlimited Music Group imprint. “Just having my personality, there’s nothing like being in control of what you produce and put out into the world,” he says. “It’s a great feeling.”
A move to New York in 2014 helped him gain wider exposure and new opportunities—though he frequently returns to his hometown for gigs and projects—and in recent years Hill has
garnered an enviable spate of press. Previewing a Blacktet show, the New Yorker said, “His performances and recordings reveal a smart post-bop player who circumvents genre clichés by incorporating elements of hip-hop and contemporary R. & B.” Of The Way We Play, DownBeatwrote, “The groove-laden arrangements provide the perfect soundscape for Hill’s fluid improvisational style, which, with its glass-like lucidity, recalls the crisp elegance of hard-bop stalwart Donald Byrd.” In 2016, Hill earned first place in the “Rising Star–Trumpet” category in that magazine’s storied Critics Poll. Throughout his journey, he has supported and guested with a who’s who of jazz that includes Marcus Miller, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Boney James, Kurt Elling, Joe Lovano and Hill’s trailblazing Chicago peer Makaya McCraven.
Today, Hill maintains a nonstop touring schedule with the Blacktet, and the intensely interactive, utterly unique band has become a kind of graduate school for next-level talent—Hill included.“One of the most beautiful things about leading a group is the flow of knowledge and energy that we bounce off of one another,” he says. “Each member contributing their distinctive voice is what truly makes the music and magic happen.”
John Sturino, (b. 1994) is an American drummer, vibraphonist, arranger, composer, and educator based in New York City. From performing the music of Frank Zappa with Zappa alumnus Arthur Barrow to international touring with the One O’Clock Lab Band, Sturino has established himself as a dynamic and versatile performer on multiple instruments. Sturino was a finalist in the Detroit Jazz Festival J.C. Heard Drumset Competition in 2017.
Sturino maintains a regular schedule as a music educator. He teaches as faculty for the Stanford Jazz Workshop and was recently a teaching fellow at the University of North Texas. Sturino also co-founded the Kenosha Jazz All-Stars, an annual summer youth program in his own hometown that brings jazz education and performance experience to middle and high school age students. Sturino currently keeps a virtual private lesson studio from his space in Brooklyn.
Sturino is also establishing himself as a budding jazz composer and arranger through his recently established large ensemble BLOW GLOBE, with plans to record a debut studio album. He continues to take on commission works from notable professional and student-level jazz ensembles. In 2020, Sturino was awarded a Commission Grant for a new large ensemble work from ISJAC (International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers) to be debuted at their 2022 symposium.
Sturino holds a B.M. in Jazz Performance and M.M. in Jazz Arranging from the University of North Texas, where he studied with Ed Soph, Ed Smith, and Rich DeRosa.
John Sturino is a Yamaha Drums Artist and Vic Firth Educational Artist.
