NYC-based drummer/composer/educator Allison Miller engages her deep roots in improvisation as a vehicle to explore all music. Described by critics as a Modern Jazz Icon in the Making. Allison has been the Artistic Director of Jazz Camp West since 2018. A lauded drummer who's mastered a vast array of musical settings--from guesting on late night TV, keeping time for some of today's most beloved singer-songwriters, and being a renowned bandleader/composer in her own right--Allison Miller is always at the heart of the music. Her latest album, Rivers In Our Veins, is a 12-song cycle embracing the concept of flow and renewal, and dedicated to our nation's crucial rivers, watersheds and the organizations devoted to reviving and protecting them. Commissioned by Mid Atlantic Arts Organization and Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Rivers In Our Veins is the studio manifestation of an ambitious live multimedia production with original music composed by Miller featuring a deeply telepathic cast of improvisers, as well as, tap and contemporary dancers.

Clarinetist-saxophonist Anat Cohen continues to win hearts and minds the world over with her expressive virtuosity and charismatic stage presence, her performances “a picture of joy,” according to DownBeat. Anat’s multiple Grammy Award nominations include one for Triple Helix, the second album by her Tentet, an extraordinary 10-piece band that she has showcased at such venues as Carnegie Hall and SFJAZZ. Bloom, her 21st album as a leader and the second by her newest group, Quartetinho, was released in September 2024. The great Nat Hentoff encapsulated her artistry this way: “Anat does what all authentic musicians do: She tells stories from her own experiences that are so deeply felt that they are very likely to connect listeners to their own dreams, desires and longings.” 

Anat has been named Clarinetist of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association every year since 2007, and she has also been the top clarinetist in both the readers and critics polls in DownBeat, the jazz bible, every year since 2011. The New York Times in 2013 profiled her as “a revelation” on the clarinet, crediting her as the primary force for bringing it into the 21st-century as a solo instrument. Earning this acclaim, the Brooklyn-based artist has toured the world, from across North and South America to Europe, Asia and India, headlining at the Newport, Umbria and North Sea jazz festivals as well as at Carnegie’s prestigious Zankel Hall and such hallowed clubs as New York’s Village Vanguard. A JazzTimes review of a 2022 Quartetinho performance at Seattle’s Earshot Festival underscored Anat’s evolution: “She has been winning jazz polls on clarinet for years, but her work has steadily grown stronger and deeper and freer.”

Since 2005, Anat’s ever-prolific series of releases via her Anzic Records label have seen her range from infectious swingers to lilting balladry, from small groups to larger ensembles and back again, exploring a world of music along the way. Anat fell for the choro music of Brazil while studying at the Berklee College of Music, and the country eventually became a home away from home for her. Not only have many of her albums as a leader included Brazilian classics and original pieces that Anat composed under the influence of choro, samba, bossa nova and more; the clarinetist has also devoted multiple albums completely to Brazilian music, including the Grammy-nominated Outra Coisa: The Music of Moacir Santos (with Brazilian guitarist Marcello Gonçalves) and the Grammy-nominated Rosa Dos Ventos (with Trio Brasileiro). DownBeat declared: “One of the most acclaimed clarinetists in jazz, the Israel-born Cohen has also managed to become one of the world’s foremost practitioners of Brazilian music. Indeed, she is now to the clarinet what Stan Getz was to the tenor saxophone in the 1960s: a jazz musician who speaks the language so fluently that she has become a beacon of Brazilian music to the larger jazz world.” 

Over the past two decades, Anat has collaborated with artists from Latin jazz star Paquito D’Rivera to pianist Fred Hersch to vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, among many others. She has also toured the world and recorded four albums alongside her brothers, trumpeter Avishai and saxophonist Yuval, as part of the 3 Cohens Sextet. DownBeat put the 3 Cohens on the cover of its January 2012 issue, and All About Jazz asserted: “To the ranks of the Heaths of Philadelphia, the Joneses of Detroit and the Marsalises of New Orleans, fans can now add the 3 Cohens of Tel Aviv.” In 2022, the 3 Cohens performed a concert with Germany’s WDR Big Band that will be released as a live album. 

Anat teaches at the Stanford University Jazz Workshop in California and The New School in Manhattan, among other institutions, and she has been Jazz Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. On March 2025, Anat will mark a milestone with four concerts in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room, overlooking the Manhattan skyline. “Anat Cohen: Journeys — A 50th Birthday Celebration” will present Anat with Quartetinho, the Tentet and alongside her brothers. As the Chicago Tribune has said out about Anat’s artistry: “The lyric beauty of her tone, easy fluidity of her technique and extroverted manner of her delivery make this music accessible to all.”

Widely hailed as one of the best jazz debut albums of 2015, Tiffany Austin’s self-released Nothing But Soul made quite a splash, including sterling reviews in Downbeat and on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Her eagerly awaited follow-up, Unbroken, confirms the Bay Area vocalist’s status as one of jazz’s elite singers and a formidable songwriter as well.

Born and raised in South Los Angeles, Austin grew up in a house filled with music. Her parents listened to soul and pop masters like Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder, while her Louisiana Creole grandmother introduced her to jazz. “She really taught me what soul was about,” Austin says. “She had a great sense of herself, and didn’t let anyone make her feel less than herself. When I sing the blues or jazz, I draw on that Grandmama place.”

Her older brother John Austin IV was also a profound influence. A celebrated emcee and rapper, he’s best known as Ras Kass. “He got signed to a record label at 17,” she recalls. “I watched him pursue his music, for better or worse, He never had a day job, and sustained himself from music. I’d sneak in his room and riffle through his records. He sampled lots of great music, and he’s responsible for my obsession with Ella scatting over the break in ‘A Night in Tunisia.’”

Austin took a very different path. She graduated from the vaunted Los Angeles High School of the Arts. At Cal State Northridge, she majored in creative writing, while studying classical voice. During the year she spent studying in the U.K., she started sitting in at jazz sessions around London. After graduating in 2004, Austin set out for Tokyo with the plan that she’d look for work as a singer and spend a year in Japan. After finding regular work as an R&B chanteuse Austin ended up staying in Tokyo through 2009 and only returned because UC Berkeley’s School of Law made her a scholarship offer she couldn’t refuse.

Austin submerged herself in law school and left music behind. After the first year, she realized that she desperately needed a musical outlet. She began performing with bassist, composer, and

bandleader Marcus Shelby on numerous projects, including a title role in Harriet’s Spirit, an opera about Harriet Tubman. “There was such a stark contrast between what I was doing in law school and what I wanted to do. I don’t regret going through the program—it made me understand what is truly important to me.”

With a series of prestigious gigs and residencies, Austin quickly gained attention as the most exciting new voice in the region. Performing a program of songs associated with Hoagy Carmichael led to her 2015 debut Nothing But Soul, the album that catapulted her into national prominence. With Unbroken, Austin makes it clear that she’s far more than a beautiful voice. Claiming her cultural birthright, she’s an artist drawing nourishment from all of jazz’s roots.