Akua Dixon, cellist, 76, New York, NY. String specialist who blazed new trails in all styles of music.

“I would say that every obstacle you could probably have as an African-American cellist in jazz, I had,” Akua Dixon has said. “But there’s a sense of satisfaction in just continuing on with my dream.”

Dixon’s dream has persisted for more than 50 years, during which time she has worked with Carmen McRae and Woody Shaw, written string arrangements for Aretha Franklin and Lauryn Hill, and been a founding member of both the Max Roach Double Quartet and the Uptown String Quartet, all the while mastering genres from classical to jazz and R&B.

Dixon grew up in New York, absorbing music through attending a Baptist church. She started playing cello in fourth grade, and moved on to local orchestras. Dixon and her sister Gayle formed a string quartet and began to play community gigs. Later she played in the pit band at the Apollo, backing legends such as Dionne Warwick and James Brown.

“I had to play to match his phrasing … and he’s very demanding,” she has said of working with Brown. “He was very gentle and very nice … but he still wanted it poppin’.”

Dixon studied classical cello at the Manhattan School of Music with Benar Heifetz. At the time, jazz was not taught at conservatories, and she had to find an alternative way to learn. Yusef Lateef was an early mentor for Dixon in the jazz world. She went on to study jazz at Collective Black Artists with Jimmy Owens, Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver. Since the cello functions as the bass in a string quartet, she studied jazz bass with Reggie Workman at the New Muse.

Dixon freelanced widely, playing in Broadway pit bands and joining Roach’s innovative group, a hybrid of a jazz combo and string quartet. She joined the Symphony of the New World, the first racially integrated orchestra in the U.S., and formed Quartette Indigo, which, as Down Beat once said, “proves a string quartet can really swing.”

Dixon studied classical cello at the Manhattan school of Music with Benar Heifetz. FYI…I wasn’t allowed to take Yusef’s class as a cello major. This was 1968, jazz was not taught at conservatories. I had to find an alternative way to learn every other style of music that I was interested in. 

Dixon has made ample time for education, working as a musical ambassador to New York City through Carnegie Hall Education, and developing the Hip Hop Blues Project, which involved composing original works for local string students. She has taught music in inner-city schools, finding teaching students of color particularly meaningful. 

“They don’t see themselves in orchestras and in other industry areas today as much as they should,” Dixon has said. “It’s exciting for them to see somebody that looks like me and accomplish what I’m accomplishing.”

Amina Claudine Myers, 82, pianist, New York, NY. Avant-garde fixture firmly grounded in tradition

No single genre is big enough to contain Amina Claudine Myers, a pianist, organist, vocalist and composer who has spent the past 60-plus years cultivating a signature musical blend that’s entirely unique to her.

Myers grew up in the rural hamlet of Blackwell, Arkansas, Myers, steeped in gospel music and rhythm & blues. After directing church choirs in high school, she began playing and singing jazz in college. Her musical world broadened considerably when, following a move to Chicago in the early ‘60s, she joined the AACM, or Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the nascent collective that included Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton, fellow future giants of uncategorizable, forward-thinking sound who would become lifelong friends, peers and sometime collaborators. 

As she later said, “everything from the AACM I carry with me. It’s AACM forever for me.”

She moved to New York in the mid-‘70s, where she became involved in the theater, acting and composing for Off Broadway shows, and collaborated with a wide array of luminaries in the worlds of jazz and beyond including Arthur Blythe, Lester Bowie, Von Freeman, Charlie Haden, Bill Laswel, Archie Shepp and James “Blood” Ulmer. Her own work has ranged from chamber music and symphonic works to solo pipe-organ concerts and elaborate stage productions featuring dance, visual art and even, in one piece, a chef. 

Myers has released 10 albums as a leader to date, including a self-produced release, Samrou. Her albums have featured the songs of Bessie Smith and works that seamlessly integrate her expansive palette of influences. “In her piano playing, the blues, the black church, classical music and free improvising coexist,” The New York Times wrote of Myers in 2018. 

In 2024, she was honored with an NEA Jazz Master Award, and released an acclaimed duo album with Smith, her friend since the early AACM days. Myers’s other honors and awards include the Jazz Legends Award from Mid-Atlantic Arts, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Arts for Arts and the Jazz Organ Award presented by the Jazz Organ Fellowship (JOF). Additionally she was Inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame in 2010.

Myers sees her many approaches and influences as a united whole. “I like to let the creator come through,” she once said, “and use me as a vessel to play this music.”

Bertha Hope, 88, pianist, New York, NY. Jazz torchbearer deeply committed to the art of surprise

“During those days I just didn’t want to sound like anyone else,” piano great Bertha Hope has said of her early musical development. “Music evolves over time and I don’t want to be pinned down. My evolution will be going on as long as I’m on the planet.”

Hope’s commitment to personal progress has kept her evolving for seven decades. Informed by her associations with a long line of fellow jazz luminaries, including her late husband Elmo Hope, she has been a quietly influential force, once called by NPR “elite among her peers.”

Blessed with perfect pitch, the L.A.-born Hope began playing piano at three years old. By junior high, Hope was taken with jazz, listening to records with her friend, drummer Billy Higgins. After seeing Bud Powell perform, Hope decided to become a jazz pianist. 

Hope befriended Eric Dolphy, who introduced her to Max Roach, Clifford Brown and Richie Powell at a band rehearsal. “Richie taught me how to put chords together and became my informal teacher,” she said. Through Higgins, she also sat in on early rehearsals by the Ornette Coleman quartet. “Ornette had an interesting process … it was very spontaneous,” Hope said. 

She met Elmo Hope in Los Angeles in 1957 — a fellow pianist dedicated to honing an original voice in jazz. They married in January 1960. Elmo had been recording albums as leader, arranger and sideman since 1947.  Once he returned to New York in 1961, Elmo and Bertha recorded Hope-Full: Solo Piano and Duo Piano With Bertha Hope for Riverside. The only album they recorded together, it is now a collector’s item.

Elmo died of heart failure in May of 1967, leaving Hope to raise their three children. “I can’t measure how Elmo influenced me,” she has said. “I listened to him so often and he offered something different, little surprises that your ear picks up, but very personal.”

Leaving music behind temporarily to support her family, Hope took night classes to earn her B.A. in Early Childhood Education and taught music in the classroom. By the 1980s, she resumed her career and has released several albums under her own name, beginning with In Search of Hope on Steeplechase Records in 1990. This album features Billy Higgins on drums and her second husband, the late Walter Booker, Jr., on bass.

Bassist Mimi Jones, saxophonist Camille Thurman and other younger musicians consider Hope an important influence.  Hope has dedicated her time to leading her own trios, quartets, and quintets — including the all-female unit, Jazzberry Jam. She remains determined to expose women musicians to each other and to the public.

Hope believes that consistently performing the original music of Elmo Hope with her own band has helped to create a wider audience for his music worldwide, and she continues to celebrate his works in concert.

Billy Hart, 84, drummer, Rutgers, NJ. Hero of jazz rhythm known to fans worldwide as “Jabali”

As the members of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking early-’70s sextet Mwandishi signed on with the band, percussionist James Mtume gave each one a Swahili name. Billy Hart’s was especially apt: Jabali. Signifying moral strength, the word literally means “rock.”

Throughout his 60-year-career, Hart has provided a sturdy foundation for countless bands, anchoring the funky yet free-form Mwandishi, Jimmy Smith’s hard-driving organ trio and the adventurous post-bop collective Quest. Appearing on more than 600 albums (include the 1972 Miles Davis classic On The Corner), he still keeps up a busy schedule, performing regularly as a sideman, in the all-star collective the Cookers, and with his tight-knit working quartet featuring saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson and bassist Ben Street.

Hart grew up in Washington, D.C., soaking up the city’s rich jazz scene. He began gigging with artists such as Otis Redding, and Sam and Dave. He studied engineering at Howard University, but left to tour with Shirley Horn. “She never, ever told me what to play. But her music was so beautiful to me that I guess I listened a little more intently than I would have with somebody else,” he later said. He went on to apprentice with the Montgomery Brothers (1961), Jimmy Smith (1964–1966), and Wes Montgomery (1966–1968). 

Hart moved to New York, where he worked with Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Eddie Harris, Pharoah Sanders and Marian McPartland. A four-year tenure with Hancock and Mwandishi (1969-1973) proved hugely influential, and other key stints included McCoy Tyner (1973–1974) and Stan Getz (1974–1977). 

Later, Hart evolved into a prolific bandleader, eventually forming his potent working quartet, which has persisted for around two decades. Meanwhile, he has honed an authoritative and completely original drumming style.

“We’re still trying to get in touch with that same emotion that everybody refers to as swinging or grooving or funky,” Hart has said of his ongoing musical mission. “It’s just that now we have so much more of a vocabulary to choose from.”

Hart also remains one of the most prolific educators in jazz, with active teaching posts at Oberlin, the New England Conservatory and Montclair State University. He has also taught at Western Michigan University and conducted private lessons through The New School and New York University. Hart has also been a frequent contributor to the Stokes Forest Music Camp and the Dworp Summer Jazz Clinic in Belgium.

“Multifaceted is an understatement for somebody who’s made 600 records — and played with everybody,” longtime Hart collaborator Dave Liebman has said of him. “He’s extremely adaptable in understanding the details, the rise and fall of the music.”

Carmen Lundy, singer, 70. Los Angeles, CA. Jazz vocalist working tirelessly to extend the tradition

JazzTimes once proclaimed that “musicians as diversely gifted as Carmen Lundy, who has excelled as a vocalist, composer, lyricist, arranger and pianist for more than three decades, remain far and few between.” Having composed and published more than 150 original songs, with 16 albums as a bandleader, she has not only been a consummate interpreter of the jazz repertoire; she has contributed significantly to expanding it. 

Twice nominated for a Grammy for Modern Ancestors and Fade To Black, Lundy is also the recipient of the RoundGlass Music Award, as well as the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in Jazz by Black Women in Jazz and the Arts. She was awarded the inaugural Centennial Medal of Honor in 2023 from the University of Miami as a distinguished alumna; among her other awards and recognitions, especially rewarding was Miami-Dade’s County Office of the Mayor and Board of County Commissioners proclaiming January 25th “Carmen Lundy Day,” along with handing Ms. Lundy the keys to the City of Miami.

A Resident Clinician at Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead at the Kennedy Center in D.C., Lundy has conducted master classes around the world. And her work isn’t limited to music: Lundy is also an accomplished sculptor and painter, and has acted in both Broadway and Off Broadway productions. A burgeoning filmmaker as well, Lundy’s first documentary, Nothing but the Blood — The True Story of the Apostolic Singers of Miami, won the prestigious Best Music Documentary Award at its world premiere at the DTLA Film Festival (Los Angeles) in 2022.

Lundy was born in Miami in 1954, to a gospel singer mother; her younger brother, Curtis Lundy, is a well-regarded jazz bassist. After beginning as an opera major, she studied jazz and studio music at the University of Miami, embarking on her jazz journey in Miami, then New York and finally in L.A. where she currently resides.

Her first solo album, 1985’s Good Morning Kiss, already included her own original songs. “Choosing to sing songs from another era doesn’t fulfill me,” she later said. “I have to sing something about today, I have to sing about now, I have to sing about the idea of how the music is evolving and what it is becoming.”

She signed to Sony for the1986 album Night and Day, featuring Kenny Kirkland on piano. After relocating to Los Angeles, she continued to record and perform around the world consistently during the ‘90s and 2000s.

In 2004, Lundy co-founded Afrasia Productions, her permanent label home. Since then, she has released masterworks like 2017’s race- and history-conscious Code Noir, along with 2019 and 2022’s Grammy-nominated Modern Ancestors and Fade to Black.

Throughout her journey, Lundy has kept her focus on how she can expand her beloved art form. “Some of the greatest contributors to the music that we call jazz are no longer with us, so what do we do?” she has said. “We can ‘boo-hoo’ or we can pick up the torch and the mantle and keep pressing.”

Dizzy Reece, trumpeter, 94. New York, NY. Committed jazz lifer beloved by multiple generations

In 1959, when the Jamaica-born Dizzy Reece made his first album in America, he was the least well-known musician in the studio. But as many have noted, his playing and writing were absolutely on par with the established stars he was working with, including Hank Mobley, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Art Taylor.

“Reece did not simply rise to the occasion, spooling out choruses that alternate between allusive minor lines and bursts of a distinctive cool swagger,” JazzTimes noted of that record date, released on Blue Note as Star Bright in 1960. “He knew the immense talents of those he was playing with, and the four tunes he brought to the date bear that out.”

Reece’s journey to the illustrious Blue Note roster was very different from that of his peers. Born in Jamaica in 1931, Reece was the son of a pianist and began learning trumpet at age 14. He soon traveled to the U.K. as part of a wave of Caribbean immigrants, and during the ‘50s, established a career in Europe and England, performing with fellow expatriate musicians such as Don Byas and Kenny Clarke. He recorded what would become his Blue Note debut in London, and soon after resettled in New York. He would later record with Duke Jordan, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones and other luminaries.

In 1959, with encouragement from Miles Davis, Reece settled in New York, where he still lives. He recorded three more albums for Blue Note and spent the next decade and the following recording for a variety of independent American and European record labels. In 1979, he founded the New York City Jazz Festival, which he produced for eight years. Established during a period where public jazz programming had left the city or was otherwise driven by corporate sponsorship, Reece’s festival was unique in its artist-centered, grassroots and accessible nature.

For Reece, jazz and blues tap into a universal feeling. “I’ve studied music from everywhere,” he has said, “it boils down to jazz and blues. Everybody has the blues cry.”

Reese’s recording activity as a leader has slowed since the ‘80s, but he remains a major influence on younger trumpet leaders, including Jeremy Pelt, Jonathan Finlayson and Marquis Hill. He received an Award of Recognition from the Festival of New Trumpet Music in 2023.

“Hearing the name Dizzy Reece… many characteristics and attributes come to my mind,” Hill has said, listing “fluidity, clarity in sound, clarity in ideas, vocabulary, language, flexibility… singability, melodicism.”

Reece, now 94, has summed up his musical goals simply, saying, “what I hope you hear coming through the bell of my trumpet is the intent.”

He has also penned an autobiography and critical studies of musicians and maintains an archive of unpublished writing and recordings from the NYC Jazz Festival as well as never-performed compositions.

Dom Salvador, pianist, 86. New York, NY. Brazilian visionary who fuses samba, jazz and funk

Since 1977, the pianist Dom Salvador has been quietly focused on the same regular gig — at the River Café, beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. What some patrons who take in Salvador’s gigs might not realize is that he is a major figure in Brazilian music history, who helped to fuse samba with American jazz, soul and funk.

“I think he’s an excellent pianist in the world of pop culture and jazz,” Harry Belafonte, who employed Salvador as a bandleader, once said. “He’s a trophy.”

Born in the small Brazilian city of Rio Claro in 1938, Salvador gravitated toward piano at an early age. Although his tutelage was in classical music, Pixinguinha — the famed choro saxophonist — turned his ear; so did the sounds of American big bands. A child prodigy, he pulled crowds at local dance clubs.

By 14, Salvador began playing piano in the popular dance band Excelsior. And in 1961, as bossa nova ascended globally, Salvador relocated to São Paulo, and then to Rio, where he formed samba-bebop outfit Rio 65 Trio. 

In 1969, he released his self-titled album, a classic Brazilian-soul document strongly influenced by acts like Kool and the Gang, and Sly and the Family Stone. “For me to do a thing where I’m copying something else, I don’t want to do it,” Salvador has said. “I like making a thing that’s a fusion, mixing the Brazilian thing with the soul thing.”

In the early 1970s, he spearheaded the group Abolição, or Abolition, which synthesized jazz, soul, funk, samba and other Brazilian styles into a unique, personal amalgam. 

By the mid ‘70s — against the backdrop of Brazilian political discord — Salvador was back in New York, single-mindedly focused on a jazz career. He recorded a solo album in 1976, and went on to play and record with Herbie Mann, Charlie Rouse and Belafonte.

He quit that gig for the one he remains at: holding down that bench at the River Café, with an astonishing 4,000 songs in his repertoire. “I think it’s fun,” he has said of the job. “It’s a part of my life.”

Eubie Blake heard his music and wrote him in a letter in 1977 stating: “I like your style of playing.” 

Salvador’s 2012 album with the Dom Salvador Samba Jazz Sextet entitled The Art of Samba Jazz won the 2012 Brazilian Music Award for Best Instrumental Album. His Rio 65 trio’s 50th anniversary celebration at Carnegie Hall was released digitally as Dom Salvador & Rio 65 Trio live in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall. 

The Dom Salvador Samba Jazz Sextet headlined at Central Park Summerstage in 2021 and the Lodge Room in Los Angeles in 2022, and performed in Dakar, Senegal, in 2024, and most recently at Winter Jazzfest 2025 in NYC. 

Salvador was also the subject of a documentary which was released in 2021 entitled Dom Salvador and Abolition.

George Cables, pianist, 80. New York, NY. Consummate jazz team player with a masterful technique

Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins — the CV of George Cables, who turns 80 this month, is studded with the names of jazz royalty, and during a career spanning more than five decades, he has proven that he too has reached the music’s highest echelon. The New York Times once said of Cables that he “he worked along the main artery of the African-American jazz tradition, when much of it still had real feeling of a people’s music,” adding that Cables “insists on complexity and elegance and groove and language evolved from bebop and the blues.”

Born in Brooklyn in 1944, he started on piano around age 6, absorbing classical music first. He discovered jazz as a teenager, gravitating toward Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. Along with peers including a young Billy Cobham, he started a band called the Jazz Samaritans. Exposure from that group earned him gigs with Roach, Art Blakey, Henderson and Rollins. After focusing on electric piano for a period, he moved back to the acoustic for impactful tenures in the bands of Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard (a five-year stint) and Art Pepper, the latter of whom was so taken with Cables’ touch at the keys that he dubbed him “Mr. Beautiful.”

Cables has recorded under his own name since the mid-‘70s, leading bands including first-rate players such as Bobby Hutcherson, Billy Higgins and Tony Williams. His steady and prolific career in the studio has yielded more than 40 albums as a leader or co-leader along with hundreds of dates as a guest artist. In 2007, Cables signed on as a founding member of the Cookers, an all-star group of fellow veterans that still thrives today, with six albums to its credit. While keeping up a busy performance schedule with the Cookers, other leaders and his own group, Cables has also taught at the New School. 

Cables’s philosophy of music today is the same one that has guided him since the beginning: The music always comes first. “It was so important to me to be a good band member,” he has said. “There are some people who say, ‘I want to be the soloist, I want to be the guy in front.’ Everyone likes the spotlight, but for that music to work, you need a team.”

George Coleman, saxophonist, 89. New York, NY. Legendary soloist and bridge between jazz generations

Asked how he approaches melody and improvisation, saxophone great George Coleman has said, “Ever since the blues days, I’m always reaching, I want to be different… I hope to be able to tell a complete story that our fans will enjoy.” 

Born and raised in Memphis, he grew up alongside future collaborators like pianist Harold Mabern and trumpeter Booker Little. As a teenager, he heard Charlie Parker and taught himself how to play the alto saxophone. In 1952, at 17, he was hired by B.B. King and switched to tenor.

In 1956, Coleman moved to Chicago where he played with Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, and later joined Walter Perkins’s group MJT+3. In 1958, he attracted the attention of drummer Max Roach and was offered a position in his band, requiring Coleman to relocate to New York City. In New York City he first roomed with Roach group bandmate and trumpet great Kenny Dorham. After Dorham left the group Coleman’s best friend and fellow Memphian, Booker Little, joined the group along with Nelson Boyd on bass. He later joined Slide Hampton’s Octet, which allowed him to tour Europe for the first time and hone his skills for composition and arranging. Seven years later, Miles Davis invited him to join the first iteration of his Second Great Quintet. 

In that time, he appeared on several albums and Herbie Hancock’s classic Maiden Voyage. As Coleman has pointed out, it was John Coltrane who recommended him for the job. “I sat in and played with Miles, and I guess evidently I had made some kind of an impression on him,” he has said.

In subsequent years, Coleman freelanced as a composer and arranger and began forming different iterations of his own groups, even adding in soprano sax.  

Coleman has long championed jazz education, teaching masterclasses and workshops at universities nationwide. “When somebody wants to get some knowledge from me, I try to give them that,” he has said. He has garnered numerous honors, including an induction into the inaugural class of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2012 and was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2015.

In 2019 Coleman was the subject of a feature-length documentary, Another Kind of Soul: The Coleman Family Legacy, along with his first wife, Gloria Coleman. The film was conceived and produced by his son and drummer George Coleman Jr. in honor of his parents’ contributions to their family and the world through their wisdom and music. 

Looking back at his long and fruitful career, Coleman has said he feels satisfied: “I feel like my contributions, from records, teaching experiences with various people I’ve taught through the years that have gone on to become really great players — that’s enough gratification.”

Herlin Riley, drummer, 68. New Orleans, LA. Musical scion bringing Crescent City jazz to the world

Herlin Riley is a crucial stitch in the rich fabric of the New Orleans scene. For nearly 50 years, the Big Easy drummer has played with innumerable jazz and R&B greats, including Al Hirt, Ahmad Jamal, Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr. and Dr. John.

A scion of the local Lastie musical dynasty, Riley has applied what Marsalis — who has known him since their teen years — has called “a kind of ancient wisdom and understanding” throughout his decades-long career.

Born in 1957 in New Orleans, Riley began playing the drums at age three. While he studied trumpet throughout high school and partly through college, he ultimately gave it up, and redoubled his commitment to his instrument of choice.

Riley has cited the importance of observing local greats both on and off the bandstand during his rich Crescent City upbringing. He was mentored by his uncles Melvin, David and Walter Lastie as well as Danny Barker, Alvin Batiste and Yvonne Busch. Regarding their profound influence, he states: “They taught me the importance of being committed to the music but most importantly being committed to having integrity and honoring your word, which will take you further than talent alone.”

From 1984 to 1987, he was a member of Ahmad Jamal’s group. In 1988, he joined Marsalis’s touring and recording unit, and went on to appear on classic late-‘80s and early-‘90s Marsalis albums such as The Majesty of the Blues, Blue Interlude and In This House, on This Morning. He was the drummer on the first-ever Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz recording, Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields in 1997.

In 1992, Riley performed on the first U.S. tour of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, playing the repertoire of Duke Ellington — and he remained a member of the hallowed ensemble for years.

Today, Riley has several albums as a leader under his belt — including his 1999 debut Watch What You’re Doing, 2004’s Cream of the Crescent, 2016’s New Direction, and 2019’s Perpetual Optimism — and continues to be a regularly featured musician at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Altogether, he has appeared as the drummer on more than 300 recordings.

Riley has served on the faculty as an adjunct jazz-drumming instructor at Juilliard School of Music, Northwestern University and the University of New Orleans (UNO). He has lectured and conducted masterclasses and workshops at various musical educational institutions around the country and abroad. 

In 1992, Riley was one of four drummers (with Earl Palmer, Herman Ernest and Johnny Vidacovich) featured on a video series entitled New Orleans Drumming: Ragtime and Beyond. He contributed to the drumming method book associated with the series and also wrote the introduction to Robert Cataliotti’s 2022 book entitled Drumsville! The History of the New Orleans Beat. 

I was the drummer on the first Pulitzer Prize winning jazz recording. Wynton’s “Blood on the Fields”

Johnny O’Neal, pianist-singer, 68. New York, NY. A pianist’s pianist with a “million-dollar touch”

“If ever somebody sounded like Art Tatum, it’s him,” the late Barry Harris once said of his pianist colleague Johnny O’Neal. “He’s got it all.”

Influenced by not only Tatum, but Oscar Peterson and Bud Powell, O’Neal turned heads on the New York City scene in the ‘80s. He left the city to pursue a quieter life but returned in the 2010s, re-staking his claim as what The New York Times called “perhaps the leading exponent of mid-20th-century jazz piano technique.” Though he has flown under the mainstream radar, O’Neal has enjoyed the esteem of peers and critics for decades.

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1956, O’Neal played gospel piano in church. He began exploring jazz and soon worked with Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Buddy DeFranco. A regular gig with Clark Terry, coinciding with O’Neal’s first move to New York, led to a tenure in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers between 1982 and 1983.

In 1985, O’Neal opened at Carnegie Hall for Peterson, who later recommended him to portray Art Tatum in the Academy Award-winning 2004 Ray Charles biopic “Ray.” 

“There are so many outstanding things about Johnny’s playing,” Mulgrew Miller once said of O’Neal. “Number one, the touch. Johnny has a million-dollar touch. … The other thing is his feeling of swing, which is so natural.” 

Soon after, he left the city, moving on to Atlanta, Detroit and St. Louis. When he returned, he reestablished himself not only as a great pianist, but also a formidable and compelling blues singer. “The audience is where I get my energy,” O’Neal has said. “I’m a piano player first, but they tend to love the singing. Part of my drawing power is just me singing the blues.” 

O’Neal has since enjoyed a new lease on life as a musical force of nature and bedrock of the New York jazz scene. A regular at clubs like Smalls, he induces awe every time he plays.

“When he first started hanging at Smalls, he’d just sit at the piano and play,” Smalls owner Spike Willner has said, “and there’d be about 10 piano players gathered about him.” 

Julian Priester, trombonist, 89. Seattle, WA. Multifaceted jazz virtuoso and invaluable educator

Describing what trombone great Julian Priester brings to a given musical situation, Christian McBride once said, “You always know you have one of the greatest players in your band — not because he’s a virtuoso, but he’s just really one of the greatest solid musicians on any instrument throughout the years.”

Many bandleaders have evidently agreed, as Priester has worked with a who’s who of legends stretching back around 70 years, including Sun Ra, Max Roach, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and Herbie Hancock.

Born in Chicago, Priester soaked up the rich local scene, learning from esteemed educator Captain Walter Dyett at DuSable High School and gigging with blues greats like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley and singer Dinah Washington. He also appeared on some of the earliest recordings by Sun Ra before leaving Chicago to tour with Lionel Hampton.

Resettling in New York in the late ‘50s, he worked with the day’s finest players, appearing on classic recordings like Roach’s We Insist! and Coltrane’s Africa/Brass. After a busy period of freelancing with wide-ranging acts including Ray Charles, Sam Rivers and Art Blakey and The Jazz Messenger he joined Duke Ellington’s band for a brief stint. He soon after signed on to the Herbie Hancock group that became known as Mwandishi, which helped to define the evolving sound of jazz in the early ‘70s. Priester’s own albums, including the cult-favorite ECM release Love, Love, continued this innovation. 

In 1979, he joined the music faculty at Cornish College of Arts in Seattle, a position he would remain in for more than 20 years. “I made [my students] aware of sound,” he has said. “I told them to listen. There’s music all over. You listen, concentrate, and play what you hear.”

Priester continued to work with cutting-edge musicians including Dave Holland, Charlie Haden, and the avant-garde metal group Sunn O))), while also sharing his wisdom and inspiring listeners young and old through at the Seattle Jazz Fellowship’s regular “Julian Speaks” events.

“I’m a firm advocate for keeping the tradition alive, because that connects the music to this country’s history,” he has said. “Each period that this country has gone through, the music is right there, building a soundtrack for society.”

Manty Ellis, guitarist, 92. Milwaukee, WI. Local legend known as the Godfather of Milwaukee Jazz

Though underrepresented on record, Manty Ellis is amply recognized in his hometown, where the 92-year-old guitarist is known as the “godfather of Milwaukee jazz.” 

Ellis’s first teacher was his father, pianist Grover Edwin Ellis, who adored Louis Armstrong. At 9, he began working as a pianist in local bands. Four years later, he heard Nat King Cole guitarist Oscar Moore and scraped together enough money to buy a guitar. 

Ellis’s other instructors included Dizzy Gillespie’s guitarist and flautist Les Spann, whom he met while working the door at legendary Milwaukee nightclub Curro’s. Ellis later studied with master guitarist and harmonica player Toots Thielemans. Other key figures he met at Curro’s included Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, Duke Pearson and Milt Jackson. 

One night on a gig, as Ellis recalled, “I plugged my guitar in and the saxophonist didn’t pay any attention. He just counted off the tune and I played the guitar. From that day forward, I never had to play any more piano.” 

Ellis became a part of Milwaukee’s burgeoning jazz scene but had little interest in jazz guitarists until Wes Montgomery. He phoned Montgomery and drove to see him in Chicago. Not only did he meet his idol, but Ellis also sat in and played Montgomery’s guitar. 

Ellis regularly accompanied legendary players when they came through Milwaukee, including Sonny Stitt and Frank Morgan. Morgan later said of Ellis that “his concept is beautiful and his art is impeccable,” adding that “there should be a monument erected to him in Milwaukee.”

“I would describe jazz as a highly improvisational predicament that you put yourself in with the music,” Ellis later said of his chosen art form. “You are free to do anything that it takes to express yourself.”

Ellis later served as musical director for The Black Scene, a local public-affairs television show. In 1971, he and musician Tony King founded an accredited jazz studies program at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. He also founded the jazz guitar program at Milwaukee Area Technical College in 1975. 

Ellis has been honored with an official proclamation from Milwaukee’s mayor. In 2023, he celebrated his birthday at local jazz café Sam’s Place, where he performed to a packed house surrounded by former students, who include contemporary jazz stars Carl Allen, David Hazeltine, Gerald Cannon, Vincent Davis and two-time Grammy-winner Brian Lynch.

Michele Rosewoman, composer/pianist, 71. New York, NY. Bandleader fusing jazz, Cuban folkloric sounds

For four decades, pianist/composer/educator Michele Rosewoman has expanded the horizons of jazz while remaining firmly rooted in tradition.  A fearless bandleader and mentor, she has made an indelible mark on her many illustrious collaborators. 

Growing up in Oakland, Michele Rosewoman embraced the musical duality that would fuel her work for decades to come. She began playing piano at age 6 and was deeply influenced by the great jazz pianist/organist Ed Kelly. Early studies in percussion and Cuban folklore profoundly impacted her approach as a pianist and composer.

“I was completely and helplessly immersed in both musical traditions from that point on,” she later said. 

Rosewoman moved to New York in 1978 and has performed with many renowned New York-based jazz and Latin artists including Julian Priester, Jimmy Heath, Billy Harper, Julius Hemphill, Baikida Carroll, Oliver Lake, Rufus Reid, Reggie Workman, Freddie Waits, Gary Bartz, James Spaulding, Billy Hart, Carlos Ward, Billy Bang, Celia Cruz, Paquito D’Rivera, Chocolate, Orlando ‘Puntilla’ Rios, Roman Diaz, Daniel Ponce, Pedrito Martinez, Nicky Marrero and Andy Gonzales.

To date, Ms. Rosewoman has released nine recordings as a leader on Blue Note, Enja, SoulNote, Toshiba-EMI and her own label, Advance Dance Disques. Her long-standing Quintessence ensemble (with five highly acclaimed releases to date) has consistently brought together the most inventive voices in jazz (Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, Gary Thomas, Miguel Zenon, Steve Lehman, Steve Wilson, Mark Shim; Robin Eubanks, Lonnie Plaxico, Brad Jones, Terri Lyne Carrington, Tyshawn Sorey, Liberty Ellman). Her New Yor-Uba ensemble, which debuted in 1983, presents an uncompromised synthesis of contemporary jazz and Cuban folkloric music.   

New Yor-Uba celebrated 30 years with a 2013 double album that garnered the #1 NPR Latin Jazz Recording of the Year by NPR. At that time, The New York Times raved, “The music wasn’t a sleek, defined hybrid, but two big cultural streams flowing simultaneously.” New Yor-Uba’s most recent album, 2019’s Hallowed, received stellar reviews in major publications including JazzTimes, JazzIz, Downbeat and was ranked #3 Latin Jazz Recording of the Year by NPR.

Rosewoman’s innovative projects have also received prestigious grants. Highlights include major support from the National Endowment for the Arts and an ASCAP/Meet the Composer Commission for Emerging Composers. Rosewoman has received four Chamber Music America New Works Creation and Presentation Commissions. Recent recognitions include commissions from the Jazz Coalition and Mutual Mentorship for Musicians and a 2021 South Arts Jazz Roads Residency Grant. In 2016, Rosewoman won a Grammy for her contribution as pianist and composer to Arturo O’Farrill’s ALJO release, “Cuba, the Conversation Continues.”

Rosewoman has presented her various ensembles at jazz festivals, concert halls, clubs and universities throughout the world. Currently, she is a board member at Chamber Music America and remains an active and dedicated educator, conducting intensive workshops and residencies. She teaches piano and composition privately, has held past positions at NYU and the New School, and currently serves on faculty at the New School and Jazz House Kids, teaching theory, piano, composition and ensemble. 

Reggie Workman, bassist, 87. New York, NY. Master artist-educator; jazz luminary for nearly 70 years.

For nearly 70 years, Reggie Workman has worked at the very center of jazz, performing with icons while guiding subsequent generations to musical excellence.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Workman played with fellow future heavyweights of the music such as Lee Morgan, Archie Shepp, Kenny Barron, and McCoy Tyner. He also worked with John Coltrane, and the joined saxophonist’s early legendary quartet, appearing on now-canonized recordings such as “Live” at the Village Vanguard. Asked decades later what he learned from Coltrane; Workman replied that “John explained to me that “I was to be myself. I hired you because of who you are and what you do, so do it.’”

Workman carried that notion into his work with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, anchoring an all-star lineup that also included Freddie Hubbard and Wayne Shorter. As a supporting artist, he excelled in every corner of jazz, playing alongside Freddie Cole, Herbie Mann, Archie Shepp, the New York Art Quartet, Sonny Stitt, Max Roach, Alice Coltrane, Mal Waldron, and dozens more. From the ‘70s on, he built up a strong catalog of albums as a leader. 

After founding his Top Shelf Quartet he created the Reggie Workman Ensemble with Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway, Jeanne Lee and John Purcell and started ongoing theater collaboration with Maya Milenovic. He created recordings such as: Synthesis (Leo Records), Summit Conference and Cerebral Caverns (Postcards). He toured with Cecil Taylor and co-founded a 30-year collaboration with Trio 3 (Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille). Now they are Trio Imagination with Cyrille and pianist David Virelles. His ongoing project Pulling features Jen Shyu, Jason Hwang, Timothy Angulo, Ayana Workman and poetry by Maya Milenoivic Workman.  

Education and community leadership have been part of Workman’s practice all along. In the ‘70s and ‘80s he co-founded Collective Black Artists, was musical director of the New Muse Community Museum in Brooklyn, co-founded the Artists Alliance, with the On Time Jazz Series. He later brought his unique skill set to the New School, where he still teaches. With Maya Milenovic, he co-founded the Montclair Academy of Dance and Lab of Music & Drama (1998), where he is still an Executive Director.

“I always say teaching reverses itself,” he has said. “You get as much out of teaching and out of the students who are coming up with new ideas as they do.”

Workman is a 2020 NEA Jazz Master, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in collaboration with Maya Milenovic; a Lifetime Achievement Award honoree from the Jazz Foundation of America and the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation; a recipient of the Eubie Blake Jazz Award for Excellence, a NYFA Fellow and more. He and Milenovic are working on a book, a documentary film (Immortal: The Musical Crusade of Reggie Workman) and a stage trilogy.

Roger Humphries, drummer, 81. Pittsburgh, PA. Renowned jazz great nurturing his hometown scene

In 1964, piano great Horace Silver was on the lookout for a new drummer. “Different musicians had told me about a fine young drummer from Pittsburgh named Roger Humphries,” Silver later wrote. “I invited him to come to New York and audition. When I heard him play, I knew right away that he was the drummer for us.” That association led to one of the most celebrated albums of the hard-bop era, Silver’s Song for My Father, and set the stage for Humphries’ brilliant and still-thriving career as a player, educator and pillar of his hometown scene.

Born in Pittsburgh, Humphries began playing drums as a child. By his teen years, he was playing professionally, and in 1962, he went on the road with fellow Pittsburgh native Stanley Turrentine. He then joined up with Silver, touring with the pianist for several years, and soon after passed an audition with Ray Charles. More touring followed, but Humphries felt compelled to return to his hometown to care for his family. 

“My mindset was like, I’m going to take my feelings and my vibes that I get from New York City and take them back to Pittsburgh with me,” he later said. 

There he launched his own band, the R.H. Factor, and transitioned to teaching, accepting a position at CAPA — Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts School — that he would hold for more than 30 years.

“When he said yes, it was one of the greatest days in my educational life and career,” CAPA principal Harry Clark later said of Humphries’ tenure at the school, “because I had an icon that could make a difference.”

In addition to Silver, Humphries has recorded with Geri Allen, Phil Woods, Richard “Groove” Holmes and many other major names. Among the prominent young players that he mentored and played with are trumpeter Sean Jones, drummer James Johnson III, bassist Paul Thompson, trombonist Emmet Goods, bassist Richie Goods, drummer Thomas Wendt, and drummer Jevon Rushton.

Of Humphries’ decision to put down permanent roots in his hometown, Jones said that it “set the foundation for folks like me, James Johnson and all of us young cats … so that we could be great.”

Humphries has also taught music at the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Slippery Rock University Summer Jazz workshop in addition to leading master classes at Carnegie Mellon.