Coltrane 100

Grammy Award-winning saxophonist and composer Joe Lovano is a versatile multi-instrumentalist born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. Known for his fearless exploration of new artistic modes within jazz, he has maintained a prolific recording career with Blue Note Records since 1991 and is celebrated for his work with ensembles ranging from intimate trios to large orchestras.

Grammy-nominated Chilean tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana was born in Santiago and began playing saxophone at age six under her father's tutelage. In 2013, at age 24, she became the first female instrumentalist and first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, launching an international career marked by visionary leadership and deeply meditative musical interpretation.

South African jazz pianist, composer, and healer born in Pietermaritzburg in 1982. Makhathini draws deeply from Zulu traditions and ancestral jazz heritage, integrating spiritual and cosmological dimensions into his work. His 2020 Blue Note debut Modes of Communication was hailed by The New York Times as one of the year's best jazz albums.

Grammy Award-winning bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh is an Australian jazz musician born in Malaysia and raised in Perth. She has performed and recorded with Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, Joe Lovano, and Vijay Iyer, and currently serves as Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music while also participating in the Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice.

Jeff "Tain" Watts is an acclaimed jazz drummer and composer born in Pittsburgh in 1960. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s with Wynton Marsalis' quintet and has since become one of the most in-demand drummers in jazz, working with Michael Brecker, Alice Coltrane, Kenny Garrett, McCoy Tyner, and Branford Marsalis, among many others. A Grammy Award winner with multiple nominations, Watts has also established himself as a bandleader and composer, earning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.