Welcome to the Vermont Jazz Center. Tonight, we welcome trumpeter Sean Jones and his touring quartet with Seth Finch (piano), Aiden Taylor (acoustic bass), and Koleby Royston (drums).
Sean Jones’ resume resonates with awards and accolades, including Trumpeter of the Year (Jazz Journalists Association), Best New Artist (JazzTimes), and Rising Star Winner (four times in DownBeat Magazine). He has garnered three Grammys for his sideman work with Dianne Reeves, Nancy Wilson, and Gerald Wilson. He was chosen by Wynton Marsalis to be the lead trumpeter of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra from 2004 to 2010. He has been the head of the Jazz Studies program at Peabody Conservatory since 2018. Jones and his wife, Brinai Ali, are co-founding Directors of the Baltimore Jazz Collective. As a recording artist, he has released eight highly regarded albums as a leader and appears as a sideman on dozens, including dates with Joe Lovano, Chico O’Farrill, Jimmy Heath, Charles Fambrough, Gerald Wilson, Steve Turre, Tia Fuller, Emmet Cohen, Nancy Wilson, and Dianne Reeves. In 2011, he toured with Marcus Miller, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter in an all-star ensemble that performed as “A Tribute to Miles.”
Along with his work as an educator and touring performer, Sean Jones creates projects that dive deeply into his beliefs and passions. An example of this is Dizzy Spellz, a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie that features Brinai Ali’s tap dancing, sung poetry and storytelling over Jones’ live performance. Dizzy Spellz offers “a deeper look at the intersecting cultural and spiritual dilemmas within the African Diaspora through the music of Dizzy Gillespie.” Dizzy Spellz wraps in “the racial and social dynamics in the Deep South, creating and curating the bebop movement in New York, to his spiritual journey to Africa and his delve into Afro-Cuban music and the Baha’i faith.” In Dizzy Spellz, Jones and Ali illustrate Gillespie’s impact on their vision as a creative couple, and the collective principles upon which they live their own lives. Jones said: “I believe that Dizzy Gillespie inherently understood jazz’s genius outside of its sonic genius, its ability to allow people to have individual freedom but with respect to the group…[Dizzy Gillespie] brought people together. They [the jazz musicians] were ambassadors for the country, the best of what the country could be.”
Sean Jones continues to move forward – to search, create and educate. He is currently the artistic director of both the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestras, Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco Performances, and a member of The SF JAZZ Collective. He serves on the Jazz Education Network’s Board of Directors and is the artistic director of Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz (National Youth Orchestra). He chaired the Berklee College of Music’s Brass Department, and held teaching positions at Duquesne University and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music – all while regularly offering concerts, master classes and clinics around the world.
Sean Jones recordings as a leader mostly include Orrin Evans on piano, Luques Curtis on bass and Obed Calvaire on drums. For live touring, he prefers to work in the mold of the late drummer Art Blakey and give opportunities to up-and-coming musicians. For tonight’s concert, he will be in the company of three young performers he has personally trained: The group’s pianist, Seth Finch, is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He recently graduated from the Juilliard School and has toured internationally/shared the stage with Diane Reeves, Kurt Elling, Quiana Lynell, Troy Davis, Wycliffe Gordon, and Jeremy Davenport. Bassist Aiden Taylor recently graduated from Peabody Conservatory with degrees in Jazz Bass Performance and Recording Arts and Sound Engineering. He is a five-time Downbeat Magazine Student Music Award winner, and a YoungArts Winner, was the 2020 Young Artist of the Year for the Society for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook, and was the bassist for the 2020 Jazz Band of America. Drummer Koleby Royston, also a recent graduate of Peabody Conservatory, is the son of two high-level jazz artists, pianist Shamie Royston (Fuller) and drummer Rudy Roytson. Royston has performed at the Kennedy Center and worked alongside Joel Ross, Allison Miller, Mark Whitfield Jr., Tia Fuller, Mimi Jones, Josh Evans, and others.
The VJC is especially grateful for the sponsorship of this concert by two teams of supporters who have been staunch members of the Vermont Jazz Center for many years. David Salzberg and Elissa Barr are dedicated music lovers from New Hampshire who are constantly investigating venues where they can quench their thirst for jazz. We are grateful that they consider the VJC to be one of their favorite places to listen to live music and for their intentional involvement with the community. Dave Ellis and Ann Greenawalt are musicians who own and run Ellis Music, a high-quality music store and instrument rental company based in Royalton, Vermont. Dave is a jazz trumpeter who is a member of the Vermont Jazz Ensemble, and Ann performs on English Horn with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra. The VJC appreciates the support of the Vermont Arts Council and media support from The Commons and The Brattleboro Reformer.
Eugene Uman