Sullivan Fortner Trio / Endea Owens & the Cookout

Terence Blanchard's UpSwing Series

ABOUT SULLIVAN FORTNER New Orleans piano maestro Sullivan Fortner debuted at the SFJAZZ Center in the superlative company of Cécile McLorin Salvant. He celebrated Thelonious Monk’s birthday in 2024 with three sublime solo sets and riveted the San Francisco Jazz Festival audience last June with an expansive duo encounter with Ambrose Akinmusire. He makes his Miner Auditorium debut as a bandleader with his exquisitely calibrated trio, which seamlessly traverses more than a century of American music with a supple, celebratory Crescent City sensibility.

ABOUT ENDEA OWENS & THE COOKOUT A Juilliard grad best known as a member of Louis Cato and the Late Show Band, the house band for the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Detroit-reared bassist Endea Owens is also making her SFJAZZ debut with her combustible band The Cookout. She’s won an Emmy, a George Foster Peabody Award, and a GRAMMY for her work on Jon Batiste’s album We Are, while performing on H.E.R’s widely acclaimed Super Bowl LV performance and contributing to the Oscar-nominated score for 2021’s Judas and the Black Messiah. Her debut album with The Cookout, 2023’s Feel Good Music, made it clear that Owens is a creative force as a player, composer, arranger and producer. It’s high time for Bay Area audiences to see what she can do.