Caili O’Doherty

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New York-based pianist, composer, arranger and educator, Caili O’Doherty is known for integrating structures of language in both her compositions and her approach to improvisation. Her recent music focuses on the celebration, preservation, and expansion upon the achievements of jazz’s unsung women heroes. O’Doherty has received national awards for piano performance and composition from the ASCAP Foundation and Downbeat Magazine.

Praised by All About Jazz for its “exquisitely forged, dramatic and darkly hued pieces”, O’Doherty’s debut release Padme (ODO Records, 2015) uses lyrics to give the melodies a natural rhythm of language. Padme was selected as a Downbeat Magazine Editor’s pick and received a 4-star review in All About Jazz. She was invited to write a Woodshed Article for the Keyboard School section of Downbeat Magazine’s September 2015 issue on the topic “Using Language as a Tool for Composing and Improvising”.

Quarantine Dream (Posi-Tone Records, 2022) was O’Doherty’s second release as a leader and featured her quartet, Tamir Shmerling on bass, Cory Cox on drums, and Nicole Glover on tenor saxophone. Quarantine Dream showcases eight original compositions and three influential songs reinterpreted by O’Doherty. The album release was followed by a U.S. CD release tour with support from a Jazz Road grant from South Arts.

Bluer Than Blue (Outside In Music, 2025) is the latest release from O’Doherty, and features her arrangements of compositions by pianist, composer, and vocalist Lil Hardin Armstrong. Bluer Than Blue was recorded live at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and was funded in part by a Presenters Consortium for Jazz grant from Chamber Music America.

The Caili O’Doherty Quintet was selected by the U.S. Department of State as one of ten ensembles to participate in the 2022-23 American Music Abroad U.S. State Department tour to the Republic of Georgia and Canada. Also in 2022, O’Doherty was one of ten artists to receive a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works Grant, which funds the creation of a new original work. O’Doherty’s CMA New Jazz Work entitled “Suite for Gearoidin” premiered at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, Bar Bayeux, and Birdland Jazz Club and will be released as an album in 2026.

O’Doherty has performed with various jazz groups at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Smoke Jazz Club (with saxophonist Antonio Hart), Kimmel Center (opening for pianist Martial Solal), Toronto Jazz Festival, Panama Jazz Festival (opening for the Wayne Shorter Quartet), Portland Jazz Festival, Guinness Cork Jazz Festival in Ireland, Dominican Republic Jazz Festival, MICI International Film Festival in Mexico, Stanford Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz Festival, and UNESCO First International Jazz Day in Paris, as well as two US State Dept. supported tours to Colombia and Togo and Benin in West Africa. She was also selected as one of five female jazz pianists invited to participate in the inaugural Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Emerging Artists Workshop held at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and to perform at a showcase concert at the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival.

Her touring history includes two west coast tours in support of O’Doherty’s album Padme with her NYC quartet, a duo tour in China with saxophonist Hailey Niswanger, a collective tour with saxophonist Caroline Davis throughout the Midwest with the Davis + O’Doherty Quartet, and a tour in Israel with saxophonist Lihi Haruvi.
O’Doherty is currently on the faculty at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. Additionally, she is on the faculty at Jazz House Kids and Savannah Music Festival Jazz Academy. She is an Artist Instructor for Open Studio Pro, a prestigious online jazz lesson platform, as well as maintaining a robust private teaching studio of her own. O’Doherty has been a faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop since 2012, as well as faculty at the University of Wisconsin Madison Summer Music Clinic and Litchfield Jazz Camp.

She holds a Bachelor of Music in performance from Berklee College of Music (BM ’13) and a Master of Music in performance from Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College (MM ’19).

Beth Schenck

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Beth Schenck is a San Francisco based saxophonist, composer and educator. Since moving to the Bay Area in 2013, Beth has become a distinguished performer in the West Coast jazz, improvised and chamber music scenes. Her current projects as a leader/composer include works for solo saxophone, her saxophone quartet Social Stutter (Kasey Knudsen, Phillip Greenlief, Cory Wright),  Beth Schenck Quintet (with Cory Wright, Matt Wrobel, Lisa Mezzacappa, and Jordan Glenn) and House of Faern (Jenny Scheinman, Matthew Wrobel and John Wood). Each of these projects showcase Beth’s versatility and commitment to pushing musical boundaries.

As a composer, Beth has written music for the Sunset Jazz Festival (Nagasaki, Japan), Women’s Work Festival (New York City), Outsound Summit (SF), Silla Festival (Korea) and schools in NYC, LA and SF. Beth’s music has been described by critics as “frank and beautiful” (Greg Burk), “reliably enthralling” and “transporting” (Andrew Gilbert). “Above and Below”, Beth’s solo album, is out now on Innova Records.

In addition to her performance and composition career, Beth is the Director of Performing Arts at the San Francisco Day School, where she also leads the jazz band. Her dedication to jazz education extends to her role as the middle school representative for the California Alliance for Jazz, where she advocates for jazz education statewide.

For more about Beth’s projects and performances, visit bethschenck.com.

Bennett Paster

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For over 30 years, pianist Bennett Paster has been a fixture on the faculty at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, where he brings his vast experience as a composer, arranger, performer, and educator available to all SJW jazz campers. In New York City, Bennett is very busy as a keyboardist, arranger, composer, bandleader, producer, recording and mixing engineer, and as the owner of his own studio.

Bennett has performed with a wide array of great jazz artists, including Wallace Roney, Keb’ Mo’, Robben Ford, Kurt Elling, Bill Stewart, Peter Erskine, Albert “Tootie” Heath, Yosvany Terry, and Curtis Stigers. He has also performed with musical theater and cabaret stars Christine Ebersole, Ann Hampton Calloway, and Michael Cerveris. He has performed original music at clubs, concerts, and festivals in the United States, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Central and South Asia, and throughout Europe.

Fluent in a variety of different styles and musical idioms, and equally talented on piano, organ, and electric keyboards, Paster has released eight recordings as a leader or co-leader. His newest funky jazz album Indivisible (2019) features ten originals, each exploring a different rhythmic feel, but unified by a singular focus on groove. He currently gigs regularly around NYC and works as a producer and engineer at his studio, Benny’s Wash & Dry, in Brooklyn, NY.

Ben Flocks

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Saxophonist and educator Ben Flocks captivates audiences around the world with his soulful sound. Born in Santa Cruz, California and residing in Los Angeles, Ben leads his own group and plays as a sideman in a variety of musical settings.

Ben has led his band at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Bern Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and has had the honor to perform with Joshua Redman’s Trio, with Dave Brubeck as a Brubeck Institute Fellow, with Thana Alexa’s Quintet, with Antonio Sanchez and Migration, and with Sammy Miller and the Congregation.

Ben holds a MA in Music Education from San José State University and a BFA from the New School in New York and currently serves on faculty at Glendale Community College and the Harvard-Westlake School. Ben has a passion for music education and teaches saxophone lessons, improvisation courses, and ensembles utilizing focused listening and peer-mentorship methods. He also leads interactive concerts in schools for all ages tracing the history of jazz.

Anisha Rush

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Born and raised in Colorado Springs, CO, saxophonist, composer, and educator Anisha Rush began playing the saxophone at the age of 10 and went on to study music and psychology, earning a BM in Jazz Studies from the Thompson Jazz Studies Program and a BA in Psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

As a performer, Anisha’s noteworthy collaborations include performances alongside luminaries such as Makaya McCraven, Ron Miles, Matt Wilson, Dawn Clement, Greg Gisbert, Shane Endsley, Art Lande, and others. Anisha has performed at several festivals including Bonnaroo, DC Jazz Festival, Winter Jazz Fest, Telluride Jazz Festival, and Five Points Jazz Festival.

Anisha actively performs as bandleader of ‘Anisha Rush and the Encounter’, a dynamic ensemble that transcends boundaries and captivates audiences with its unique fusion of genres while still utilizing the improvisational traditions of jazz. The band refuses to be put in a box, and will often play music reminiscent of not only jazz but also soul, R&B, and gospel.

In 2023, Anisha was selected for the Next Jazz Legacy, an apprenticeship program led by New Music USA and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Additionally, Anisha Rush and the Encounter is a recipient of a 2024 grant from Chamber Music America’s Performance Plus program, funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Foundation.

Andrew Stephens

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Andrew Stephens is a trumpeter and educator based in NYC since 2021. He holds a Masters degree from Juilliard, and has performed Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony with the Juilliard Jazz Orchestra and Juilliard Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Andrew has been working outside of school with Kaleidoscope, a group he formed with two fellow students, as well as touring with the Hot Sardines; he also recently recorded an album with Electroveesedstene, a project he co-leads with Ben Goldberg, which features Kenny Wollesen, Ryan Ferreira, Hamir Atwal, Kai Lyons, and Michael Coleman.

Andrew was born in Sacramento and began playing at the age of 10, immediately interested in Louis Armstrong and traditional jazz, which was a strong part of the scene there. He moved to the Bay Area to get his BA in pure mathematics at UC Berkeley, and worked his way into the jazz scene outside of school. He was an instructor at Sonoma State University from 2018 until 2021, where he taught private lessons and led the university’s first early jazz ensemble for 2 semesters. In addition, he has taught at Stanford Jazz, the California Jazz Conservatory summer program, and the Teagarden Jazz Camp. He is the winner of the 2021 Ryan Anthony Memorial Trumpet Competition, and placed 2nd in the 2019 Carmine Caruso Competition. “

Anat Cohen

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Anat Cohen has won hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and delightful stage presence. Anat has been voted Clarinetist of the Year six years in a row by the Jazz Journalists Association, as well as 2012’s Multi-Reeds Player of the Year. That’s not to mention her topping of critics and readers polls in DownBeat magazine several years running. Anat has toured the world with her quartet, headlining at the Newport, Umbria, SF Jazz, and North Sea jazz festivals as well as at such hallowed clubs as New York’s Village Vanguard. In September 2012, her own Anzic Records released her sixth album as a bandleader, Claroscuro. The album ranges from buoyant dances to darkly lyrical ballads, drawing inspiration from New Orleans and New York, Africa, and Brazil. In its ebullient, irresistible variety, Claroscuro encapsulates the description Jazz Police offered of Anat in full flight: “She becomes a singer, a poet, a mad scientist, laughing – musically – with the delight of reaching that new place, that new feeling, with each chorus.”

Anat collaborates regularly with one of her heroes, Cuban-American clarinetist-saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, who introduced her onstage at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola in the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex as “one of the greatest players ever of the clarinet.” She plays with George Wein’s Newport All-Stars and is a fixture on the New York scene at such clubs as Birdland, starring in a recent tribute to the music of Django Reinhardt, among much else. Anat has also appeared in New York at the Jazz Standard, Blue Note, Iridium, Joe’s Pub, and the Jazz Gallery, as well as other top clubs across the country and around the world – Yoshi’s in San Francisco, Blues Alley in Washington, D.C., Regatta Bar in Boston, the Sunset in Paris, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, Jazzclub Fasching in Stockholm, A Trane in Berlin, and Zappa in Tel Aviv. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and Symphony Space in New York, along with Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Newark’s New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Boston’s Berklee Performance Center, the ORF-Kulturhaus in Vienna and Belgrade’s Kolarac Hall in Serbia. Anat has played the great jazz festivals the world over, including the JVC, Newport, Chicago, Monterey, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage, SF Jazz (San Francisco), Playboy (Los Angeles), Duke Ellington (Washington, D.C.), Montreal, Copenhagen, Jazz a Vienne, Umbria, North Sea (Netherlands), Tudo e Jazz (Brazil), Caesaria (Israel), and Zagreb Jazzarella festivals. Her performances have been broadcast internationally, including by WBGO, WFUV, WNYC, and NPR in the U.S. and Radio Netherlands, ORF (Austrian Radio), SR (Swedish Radio), and Radio Bremen (Germany).

Allie Biancoviso

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Allie Biancoviso is a trombonist, composer, and educator from Staten Island, New York. Currently residing in Miami, Allie graduated from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami with a master’s degree in jazz pedagogy while studying trombone with Dante Luciani. She also holds a bachelor’s in music education from Penn State where she studied trombone with Mark Lusk.

An experienced performer in jazz, classical, and popular music settings, Allie performs regularly with her band and as a freelancer. Most recently, Allie toured as a sideman with the Mike Davison Big Band in Santiago de Cuba at the Festival Internacional Jazz Plaza in January 2024. Her band, The Allie Biancoviso Quintet was featured as a finalist for the Music at McBride Performance Series in January 2024.

Allie serves as a teaching assistant for the University of Miami’s Shalala MusicReach Program where she provides jazz instruction at schools across Miami. She also currently serves as the Adjunct Instructor of Low Brass at Westminster Christian School.

In addition to performing, Allie has conducted research centered on ways to create inclusive learning environments for women in jazz. She has presented this research at multiple conferences including the 2023 Jazz Education Network Conference, 2022 Pennsylvania State Music Educators Conference, and 2021 New York State School Music Association Conference.
Allie will participated in Jazz Aspen’s JAS Academy. Allie is a recipient of the 2022 Jazz Education Network Hal Leonard Scholarship and 2022 Margot Jazz Fund Award. In 2020, Allie was selected to be a participant in both the Women in Jazz Organization’s Mentors Program and The International Women’s Brass Conference’s Mentorship Program where she studied with Kalia Vandever, Jennifer Wharton, and Andrea Neumann.

Adi Meyerson

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Adi Meyerson is an Israeli-raised bassist and composer. She was born in San Francisco to American parents. At the age of 2, she relocated with her family to Jerusalem, Israel, where she grew up and received her first musical training at the prestigious Charles A. Smith Jerusalem High School of the Arts on bass guitar at the age of 14. After graduating from high school, Adi started playing the upright bass in the search of a new sound that was more appropriate for jazz. Three months later, Adi was accepted to the prominent collaborative program between The Center of Jazz Studies (CJS) at the Israel Conservatory of Music and The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. There she had the privilege to study and play with some of Israel’s finest musicians such as Amit Golan, Amos Hoffman, Ofer Ganor, Danny Rosenfeld, Erez Bar Noy, Yuval Cohen and many others, as well as the opportunity to work with international jazz legends such as Jimmy Cobb, Mulgrew Miller, Peter Bernstein and Eddie Henderson.

In August 2012, Adi moved to New York to continue her studies at The New School, graduating in 2014. There she studied with some of the great masters of the style such as Reggie Workman, Ron Carter, Charles Tolliver, Kirk Nurock, Billy Harper, Bob Cranshaw and many more.

Since Moving to New York, Adi has already made an impact on the NYC jazz scene and earned her reputation as an up-and-coming young talent. She has played with many local greats such as Joel Frahm, Joe Magnarelli, Steve Nelson, Charli Persip and many others around the NYC area in venues such as Mezzrow, Smalls Jazz, Fat Cat, Smoke Jazz, Minton’s, Zinc Bar, and Dizzy’s Coca Cola. She recently toured the US and recorded with the Champian Fulton band for Positone records.

As an educator, Adi has worked with bandleader and drummer LaFrae Sci at Jazz at Lincoln Center, as part of the Jazz For Young People program. She has also performed in schools around the New York area with The Jazz Drama Program, directed by Eli Yamin, bringing jazz, dance and theater to young people. Adi has also taught at Jazz House Kids as part of their yearly Chica Power residency.

Adi also leads her own band, The Adi Meyerson Band, and performs regularly in NYC. The band recorded its debut album Where We Stand in September 2017, and it will be released on June 5th on all platforms.

John Burn

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We are thrilled to welcome John Burn as director of the Giant Steps Big Band program!

John brings a wealth of experience as a top jazz educator, and is the Director of Bands and Orchestra and the Music Department Lead at Homestead High School, where he has taught since 1991. John is a Past-president of: California Music Educators Association, California Band Directors Association, California Music Educators Association Bay Section, Santa Clara County Band Directors Association, and the Santa Cruz Jazz Festival Board of Directors.

John has received several significant commendations including: the 2023 National Federation of High School Associations Region 7 (California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada & Hawaii) Outstanding Music Educator Award, a 2019 Grammy Music Educator Award Semi-finalist; the 2015 CBDA Distinguished Service Award; 2014 School Band & Orchestra Magazine’s California representative in their annual article, “50 Directors that Make a Difference”; the 2010 CMEA California Band Director of the Year; the 2009-2010 Homestead High School Teacher of the Year; and he is a 2009 Inductee to the John Philip Sousa Foundation’s Legion of Honor.

John is active as a guest conductor for honor groups and as an adjudicator for band, orchestra and jazz festivals. He has conducted seven different honor bands and orchestras so far including the 2018 California All-State Honor Junior High Concert Band. He has directed the Jazz Band, Orchestra and the Concert Band at Cazadero Performing Arts Camp. He is a regular adjudicator for CMEA Bay Section Band, Orchestra and Jazz Festivals and has also adjudicated concert and/or marching events in Santa Barbara, CA, and Reno, NV.

John is a contributing author in the book, “Teaching Music Through Performance in Orchestra,” Volume 4, GIA Publications, 2021, and has presented sessions at state and local conferences in California and Alaska.

Bands and orchestras under John’s direction consistently earn high ratings at regional, state, and international festivals, including performances in the Musikverein in Vienna, the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Kobe Jazz Festival in Kobe, Japan, Carnegie Hall in New York City, and Disney Hall in Los Angeles. The Homestead Marching Band performed in the 2011 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the 2018 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena.

John plays lead trumpet in a semi-professional jazz band called, “The Footnotes,” and is marching with the “Saluting America’s Band Directors” Band Director Marching Band in the 2023 Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade as he did with this band in the 2022 Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade.

John holds a B.A. in Music Education from UCLA and a Master’s Degree in Music Education from the University of Illinois, and graduated from the high school where he now teaches, Homestead High. John lives in Santa Cruz, with his patient and supportive wife, Allison.