Meet the Artists

Kind of Blue Band, with Eddie Henderson, Javon Jackson, Donald Harrison, Buster Williams, Orrin Evans, and Willie Jones, III, is an all-star collective that performs music from the iconic 1959 sextet session Kind of Blue, and the hard bop and exploratory music of Miles Davis in the 1950s and ’60s.

Front and center is trumpeter Eddie Henderson, a virtuoso influenced by Miles as a teenager, after first meeting his idol at age 17. Known widely for his work with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band of the early 1970s, he has released nearly 30 albums and is a current member of The Cookers.

NEA Jazz Master, saxophonist Donald Harrison, is part of the fabric of New Orleans culture. He started in New Orleans’ second-line culture and studied New Orleans’ secret tribal culture under his father, Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr. He began participating as a masked Mardi Gras Indian at the age of two, with the title “Little Chief of the Creole Wild West.” Harrison is currently the Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans Culture. In addition to being a celebrated band leader, he has toured with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, Eddie Palmieri, Jack McDuff, Terrence Blanchard, and is a member of the all-star group The Cookers. 

Saxophonist Javon Jackson has been a major voice in jazz since the early 1990s and issued 20 releases as a leader. He first became known as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers from 1987 until Blakey’s death in 1990. and went on to release 22 recordings as a bandleader and tour and record on over 150 CDs with jazz greats including Elvin Jones, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Haden, Betty Carter, Cedar Walton, Ron Carter, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Stanley Turrentine, and Ben E. King.

For more than two decades, Yamaha pianist Orrin Evans has made an art form of the unexpected. With more than 25 albums to his credit, Evans is widely recognized as one of the premiere pianists of his generation. In addition to his work as a bandleader, he has performed and recorded with Bobby Watson, the Mingus Big Band, Ralph Peterson, The Bad Plus, and is a co-leader in the Lisa Fischer and Orrin Evans Duo, and the widely acclaimed group Tar Baby, with Eric Revis and drummer Nasheet Waits.

Charles Anthony “Buster” Williams is an American jazz bassist, who in addition to being an accomplished band leader has worked with a number of seminal figures in modern music, including Herbie Hancock, Larry Coryell, Abdullah Ibrahim, Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Bobby Hutcherson, Shirley Horn, and Miles Davis. He was a member of the Thelonious Monk repertory band Sphere.

Willie Jones, III is one of the world’s most celebrated modern jazz drummers. Born in Los Angeles, Jones was awarded a full scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied under the tutelage of the late NEA Jazz Master Albert “Tootie” Heath. He was a founding member of the LA-based collective Black Note, and is an alumnus of the Roy Hargrove Quintet, and has been the drummer of choice for legendary jazz artists like Sonny Rollins, Ernestine Anderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Cedar Walton, Hank Jones, Frank Wess, Bill Charlap, Michael Brecker, Kurt Elling, Herbie Hancock, and Wynton Marsalis. Since 2009, he has served as drum professor at Northwestern University in Chicago.