Terri Lyne Carrington (Drums)

Three-time GRAMMY® award-winning drummer, producer, educator and activist, Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career as a “kid wonder” while studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the mid '80’s she worked as an in-demand drummer in New York before gaining national recognition on late night TV as the house drummer for both the Arsenio Hall Show and Quincy Jones’ VIBE TV show.

In 1989, Ms. Carrington released a GRAMMY®-nominated debut CD on Verve Forecast, Real Life Story, and toured extensively with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, among others. In 2011 she released the GRAMMY®Award-winning album, The Mosaic Project, featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists, and in 2013 she released Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, which also earned a GRAMMY®Award, establishing her as the first woman ever to win in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category.

To date Ms. Carrington has performed on over 100 recordings and has worked extensively with luminary artists such as Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Clark Terry, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, James Moody, Yellowjackets, Esperanza Spalding, and many more. Additionally, Ms. Carrington is an honorary doctorate recipient from Berklee, and currently serves as Founder and Artistic Director for the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

In 2019 Ms. Carrington was granted the Doris Duke Artist Award, a prestigious acknowledgement in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz music. Her current band project, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science (a collaboration with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens), released their debut album, Waiting Game, in November, 2019 on Motema Music.

*photo by Tracy Love

Dwayne Dolphin (Bass)

Dwayne Dolphin began playing the drums at ten years of age. In that same year he began to play the bass guitar. By the time Dolphin was fifteen, he was on the jazz scene working with Pittsburgh greats such as Roger Humphries, Pete Henderson, Carl Arter.

Upon graduation from high school, Dwayne headed for the bright lights of New York City to start the beginning of a promising career in the world of jazz. Dolphins’ talent was immediately put to use by Grammy Award winning trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. While touring extensively throughout the USA with Marsalis, he also appeared on the Tonight Show with this award-winning quintet. Dolphin then joined the Hank Crawford Group. It was the teaching of Crawford that schooled this young lion about the true meaning of the blues.

Firmly rooted in the traditional jazz format, Modern Jazz was the next challenge for the young bassist. Touring the United States, Europe, and Japan with Geri Allen, Wallace Roney, Don Byron, and Oliver Lake.

Never forgetting his roots, Dwayne returned to the mainstream to work with the incomparable Stanley Turrentine. He toured with, as well as recorded on one of Turrentines’ most memorable records (“T- Time”).

Throughout his career, Dolphin has had the opportunity to play and record with the “Who’s Who” of music. Nancy Wilson, Melba Moore, Fred Wesley, and Abby Lincoln, just to name a few.

Mr. Dolphins’ vast and diverse experience has afforded him the opportunity to lend his musical expertise in many areas. Including performance with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater’s production of “Indigo In Motion,” as well as his current position at Duquesne University as Adjunct Professor of Jazz.

His latest recording project is involving his very innovative Piccolo Bass. With this self-designed instrument. Dwayne expresses and invites us all to see a side of him that we have never seen before. With his new releases “4 Robin,” scheduled for Spring 2004, he will mesmerize you with a style that is completely all his own.

Vijay Iyer (Piano)

Described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” composer- pianist VIJAY IYER has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in twenty-first-century music. He received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts, and was voted Downbeat Magazine’s Jazz Artist of the Year four times in the last decade.

He has released two dozen albums, including The Transitory Poems (ECM Records, 2019) in duo with pianist Craig Taborn; Far From Over (ECM, 2017) with the Vijay Iyer Sextet; A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (ECM, 2016) in duo with composer-trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith; Break Stuff (ECM, 2015) with the Vijay Iyer Trio; the live score to the film Radhe Radhe: Rites of Holi (ECM, 2014) by filmmaker Prashant Bhargava; and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project (Pi Recordings, 2013) with poet-performer Mike Ladd.

Iyer’s concert works have been commissioned and premiered by Brentano Quartet, Lutoslawski Quartet, Ethel, Brooklyn Rider, Imani Winds, American Composers Orchestra, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Silk Road Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Chamber Orchestra Leopoldinum, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, LAPhil Group for New Music, American Composers Orchestra, and soloists Matt Haimowitz, Claire Chase, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Shai Wosner, and Jennifer Koh. Iyer is the Artistic Director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. He teaches at Harvard University.

*photo by Monica Jane Frisell

Nicole Mitchell (Flute)

Nicole Mitchell is an award- winning creative flutist, composer, bandleader and educator. She initially emerged from Chicago’s innovative music scene in the late 90s, where she became a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and eventually served as the first woman president. Called the “greatest living jazz flutist of her generation” (Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader), Mitchell has repeatedly been awarded #1 Jazz Flutist by Downbeat magazine and the Jazz Journalists Association each year from 2010-2020. A United States Artist Fellow (2020), a Doris Duke Artist (2012), and a recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2011), Mitchell’s research centers on the powerful legacy of contemporary African American culture. For over 20 years, Mitchell’s critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble (BEE) has been her primary compositional laboratory, with which she has performed throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S. As a composer she has been commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Art Institute of Chicago, the French American Jazz Exchange, Chamber Music America, the Chicago Jazz Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Mitchell is the William S. Dietrich II Chair in Jazz Studies and the Director of Jazz Studies at University of Pittsburgh.