Béla Anton Leoš Fleck is an American banjo player. An acclaimed virtuoso, he is an innovative and technically proficient pioneer and ambassador of the banjo, playing music from bluegrass, jazz, classical, rock and various world music genres. He is best known for his work with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Fleck has won 15 Grammy Awards and been nominated 33 times.
Robert Keith McFerrin Jr. is an American jazz singer and songwriter. He is known for his vocal techniques, such as singing fluidly but with quick and considerable jumps in pitch—for example, sustaining a melody while also rapidly alternating with arpeggios and harmonies—as well as scat singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and improvisational vocal percussion. He is widely known for performing and recording regularly as an unaccompanied solo vocal artist. He has frequently collaborated with other artists from both the jazz and classical scenes.
Karl Hans Berger was a German-American jazz pianist, vibraphonist, composer, and educator. He was a leading figure in jazz improvisation from the 1960s when he settled in the United States for life. He founded the educational Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, in 1972 with his wife and Ornette Coleman, to encourage international students to pursue their own ideas about music.
Bruce Randall Hornsby is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. His music draws from folk rock, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Southern rock, country rock, jam band, rock, heartland rock, and blues rock musical traditions.
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
Enrico Pieranunzi is an Italian jazz pianist. He combines classical technique with jazz.
Bradford Alexander Mehldau is an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.
Tim Kliphuis is a Dutch violinist renowned for mixing gypsy jazz with classical and folk music, whose recent works have been dedicated to raising awareness about climate change.
Emily Jordan Bear is an American composer, pianist, songwriter and singer. After beginning to play the piano and compose music as a small child, Bear made her professional piano debut at the Ravinia Festival at the age of five, the youngest performer ever to play there. She gained wider notice from a series of appearances on The Ellen DeGeneres Show beginning at the age of six. She has since played her own compositions and other works with orchestras and ensembles in North America, Europe and Asia, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Montreux Jazz Festival and Jazz Open Stuttgart. She won two Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the youngest person ever to win the award, and also won two Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composers Awards.
Wally Shoup is an American jazz alto saxophonist and painter. Based in Seattle, Washington since 1985, Shoup is a mainstay of that city's improvised music scene. Seattle Metropolitan named him one of the 50 most influential musicians in that city's history.
Originally opened on November 1, 1979, as Center for the Arts, the Singletary Center for the Arts is a fine arts complex located on the campus of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. Nearly eight years after its opening, on April 16, 1987, Center for the Arts was dedicated to and renamed after the eighth president of the University, Dr. Otis A. Singletary, becoming henceforth known as the Singletary Center for the Arts.
Inside Out is a live album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall in London on July 26 & 28, 2000 and released on ECM October the following year. The trio—Jarrett's "Standards Trio"—features rhythm section Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette. Along with Changes (1983) and Changeless (1987), this was the trio's third album to feature mainly original improvised material.
Sam Sadigursky is a clarinetist, saxophonist, flutist and composer.
Joseph Frederick Brent is an American composer, mandolinist, multi-instrumentalist, and teacher. He is known for his performances and arrangements of rock and indie songs, as well as his original compositions with the ensemble 9 Horses. He teaches classical mandolin at Mannes College.
Charles Burnham is an American violinist and composer. He has a unique highly imaginative style that crosses genres, including bluegrass, delta punk, free jazz, blues, classical and chamber jazz. He often performs with a wah-wah pedal. He initially became renowned for his work on James "Blood" Ulmer's Odyssey album. The musicians on that album later performed and recorded as Odyssey the Band, sometimes known as The Odyssey Band. He was also a member of the String Trio of New York, and currently plays in the 52nd Street Blues Project, Hidden City, We Free StRings, Improvising Chamber Ensemble and the Kropotkins.
Tomeka Reid is an American composer, improviser, cellist, curator, and teacher.
Sara Caswell is an American violinist who has worked with 9 Horses, Esperanza Spalding, and David Krakauer.
Ryan Choi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist.
Noah Flynn Kaplan, known professionally as Noah K, is an American composer, saxophonist, and record producer.
Grant Gordy is an American guitarist and educator based in New York City. He played in the David Grisman Quintet and he is currently a member of Mr Sun with Darol Anger, Joe K. Walsh and Aidan O’Donnell.
