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.”

When St.Louis native vocalist, composer, educator Alicia Olatuja sings, the world listens. Her aural artistry is a wondrous weave of jazz, blues, gospel, classical, pop and Afropop musical genres. Olatuja’s embrace of those sonic stylings have enabled her to work with a wide variety of musicians - from jazz superstars Chris Botti, Christian McBride and Michael Olatuja, to R&B and gospel legends Chaka Khan. And BeBe Winans - and it also enables her to be a comprehensive and compelling artist in her own right. “I see myself as a prism,” Olatuja says, “just as light goes into a prism and then scatters in different colors, that’s pretty much what I've always focused on being able to do as an artist, regardless of what genre I’m singing.” Olatuja grew up immersed in a kaleidoscope of musical influences in St. Louis. Inspired by Whitney Houston, Olatuja started singing at the age of 5. She sang in the Berean Seven Day Adventist Church, listened to a wide variety of Black music including jazz, R&B and soul and was classically trained as an opera mezzo-soprano singer. After double majoring in Veterinary Medicine and Music at the University of Missouri, Olatuja moved to New York City in 2005, and later earned her Masters degree in Classical Voice/Opera from the Manhattan School of Music. She made her recital debut at Carnegie Hall and her professional debut as Sacagawea at Opera Memphis It was at the Manhattan School of Music where she met African jazz/Afrobeat bassist Michael Olatuja. “I started working with him and some other musicians as well,” Olatuja says, “We got married in 2007, and we decided to merge our visions, as far as working together and creating music that we felt would impact people in a positive way.” She recorded on his 2009 debut recording Speak, and they collaborated as The Olatuja Project on their 2013 release, The Promise. “In 2015 we decided to go our separate ways,” Olatuja recalls, “but we always respected and loved each other, and we always believed that we were supposed to be in each other's lives. We stayed in touch for several years… He started working on Broadway, and I started my solo career.” In 2013 Olatuja sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir at President Obama’s Second Inauguration. The New York Daily News praised her as “a new musical star,” and the award-winning jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves also took notice of her performance.”I think about her as like a fairy godmother of the industry because she really championed for me,” Olatuja fondly remembers. “She saw that performance and we met. She recommended me to other musicians and artists, and that led to touring and all kinds of things.” Reeves recommended Olatuja to her friend, pianist-composer Billy Childs. In 2014, he released Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro, which also featured Reeves. Olatuja sang with Child’s touring ensemble performing music from that recording. Olatuja would go on to work with many other artists. She recorded on bassist Christian McBrides’ recording, The Movement Revisited: A Portrait of Four Icons. Olatuja has also worked with gospel singer Bebe Winans, R&B legend Chaka Khan, organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, trumpeter Chris Botti, drummer Ulysses Owens, Jr. on his Songs of Freedom, a Jazz at Lincoln Center commissioned project, which featured the music of Abbey Lincoln, Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone, and Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz Orchestra, led by trumpeter Sean Jones. Olatuja released her debut recording, Timeless, which earned her a 4 star review from Down Beat, and featured McBride, harmonica virtuoso Grégoire Maret, pianist Christian Sands and alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, and it also featured Olatuja’s inventive take on Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” Olatuja’s second release, Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women, featured selections composed by women including Sade, Linda Creed, Kate Bush, Tracy Chapman and Angela Bofill. In 2023 Olatuja also recorded The Parsonage: True Tales of Love and Anarchy at 64 East 7th St., featuring vocalist Theo Bleckmann. In addition to her career as a performing artist, Olatuja is also an exceptional educator. She’s taught at several schools including, The University of Texas, The University of Illinois, Baylor University, Snow College, and at several schools in Turkey, Serbia and Japan when she was on tour with the musical, La Mama Cantata, based on the life of theater director/producer Ellen Stewart. In 2021, during the pandemic, Olatuja - who is also a LPI certified Life Coach specializing in Vocal Empowerment - created the Vocal Breakthrough Academy: a 5 week online program where singers and non-singers who are looking to break through self-doubt and comparison learn how to authentically connect with themselves and others through singing so they can transform their voices while using singing as a vehicle for personal-development. For Olatuja, education is a family affair. “My grandmother was one of the first Black nurses who graduated from Washington University. And she went on to become a counselor, teacher and a college professor. My mother is a teacher. She's taught genius children. She's taught children with learning disabilities. She's taught adults, she's taught ESL, she’s done all these different types of educational curriculums… So, education has always been a very big deal in my family.” The future is a big deal for Alicia Olatuja. Her forthcoming projects include a reunion recording with Michael Olatuja, whom she had been touring with since 2021, and a new solo project. Simply put: We can expect a myriad of musical projects from this ever-evolving vocalist. “I'm the type of artist that wants to break the barriers and break the lines down between genres.”