Your Teaching Team

Each brilliant in their own right... together they're a formidable teaching team with a vast knowledge across all stylistic boundaries.

Featuring…

Kurt Rosenwinkel

American composer, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and producer Kurt Rosenwinkel is one of the most celebrated musical voices in jazz and is widely renowned as one of the most distinctive and gifted guitarists to have ever played the instrument.

John Scofield

John Scofield’s guitar work has influenced jazz since the late 70’s and is going strong today. Possessor of a very distinctive sound and stylistic diversity, Scofield is a masterful jazz improviser whose music generally falls somewhere between post-bop, funk edged jazz, and R & B.

Kevin Eubanks

Kevin Eubanks, guitarist and prolific composer.  He is well known by many as the former Music Director of The Tonight Show band, appearing on the show 18 years (1992 - 2010). His laid back style and affability seems to belie the concentration and focus that have made him successful both as a consummate musician and a household name for late-night TV viewers. 

Wolfgang Muthspiel

The guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel (*1965) lives in Vienna and is considered one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. After being classically trained on the violin, he discovered his love for guitar at the age of 15. An interest in both his own and improvised music eventually led him to focus on jazz.

Gilad Hekselman

Gilad Hekselman is one of the leading voices in jazz guitar. Only a few years after his arrival to NY in 2004, this native Israeli was already sharing stages with some of the greatest artists in the New York City jazz scene including Chris Potter, Eric Harland, Fred Hersch, Mark Turner, Anat Cohen, Ari Hoenig, Esperanza Spalding, Jeff Ballard, Ben Wendel, Gretchen Parlato, Ben Williams, Avishai Cohen, Tigran Hamasyan, Aaron Parks and Becca Stevens among many others.

Vernon Reid

Vernon Reid is a British-born American guitarist and songwriter best known as the founder of the rock band Living Colour. Reid was named No. 66 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and in August 2023, was ranked #42 in Rolling Stone Magazine top 250 Greatest Guitarists of all time. Critic Steve Huey writes “Reid’s rampant eclecticism encompasses everything from heavy metal and punk to funk, R&B and avant-garde jazz, and his anarchic, lightning-fast solos have become something of a hallmark as well.”

Joel Harrison

Guitarist, composer, arranger, lyricist, writer, educator, and vocalist Joel Harrison has created a new blueprint for jazz” (New Orleans Times-Picayune). A Guggenheim Fellow (2010) whose compositions have been commissioned by Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, New Music USA, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, and the Mary Flagler Cary Trust, Harrison is a two-time winner of the Jazz Composers Alliance Composition Competition and has appeared repeatedly on DownBeat Magazine’s “Rising Star” poll.

Anthony Pirog

Washington, D.C.'s jazz and experimental music scenes wouldn't be quite where they are today without Anthony Pirog. The guitarist, composer and loops magician is a quiet but ubiquitous force on stages around his hometown and the world. With fearsome chops and a keen ear for odd beauty, Pirog has helped expand the possibilities of jazz, rock and experimentalism in a town long known for its straight-ahead tradition.

Mary Halvorson

Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has been described as “a singular talent” (Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes), ”NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “one of the most original jazz guitarists of our time” (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily), and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). In recent Downbeat Critics Polls Halvorson has been celebrated as guitarist, rising star jazz artist, and rising star composer of the year, and in 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Guest Appearance by

Steve Swallow

Artists at Large

  • Larry Grenadier

    As one of the most admired, accomplished bassists working in jazz today, Larry Grenadier has been praised as “a deeply intuitive” musician by The New York Times and as an instrumentalist with a “fluid sense of melody” by Bass Player magazine. Grenadier has created an expansive body of work in collaboration with many of the genre’s most inventive, influential musicians – from early days playing with sax icons Joe Henderson and Stan Getz to what has been decades performing alongside pianist Brad Mehldau, from extended experiences working with the likes of Paul Motian and Pat Metheny to co-leading the cooperative trio Fly (with Mark Turner and Jeff Ballard) and quartet Hudson (with John Scofield, John Medeski and Jack DeJohnette). Over a performing and recording career that now spans three decades, it has been not only Grenadier’s instrumental virtuosity and instantly recognizable tone that have made him such an in-demand collaborator but also his uncommon artistic sensitivity, imagination and curiosity.

  • Bill Stewart

    Bill Stewart grew up in Des Moines, Iowa listening to his parents' jazz and rhythm and blues records without much exposure to live jazz in the then relatively isolated state of Iowa. His father was a trombonist, and his first and middle names are a tribute to jazz trombonist Bill Harris. Mostly self-taught, Bill began playing at the age of seven (he was born on October 18, 1966). Bill attended the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa, playing in the jazz and marching bands as well as the orchestra. He then transferred to William Paterson University where he played in ensembles directed by Rufus Reid, studied drums with Eliot Zigmund and Horacee Arnold and took composition lessons from Dave Samuels. After college, Bill Stewart moved to New York where he quickly built his reputation, first gaining wider recognition in John Scofield's quartet and in a trio with Larry Goldings and Peter Bernstein, which has become the longest-running group Stewart has played with, having begun in 1989 and continuing to the present day.

  • Harvey Sorgen

    In sound, motion and beauty….so to lays the groundwork for truth. All that I am becomes a part of my own way of communication. In striving for a lifestyle unfettered by my own limitations, I am eternally grateful to have created honest music with some of the greatest artists of our time. It’s almost like I have to pinch myself sometimes to not forget how fortunate I am to have the love of my family, and the spirit to be open to what may appear to be right in front of me!! Just a very few of the artists I have had the great fortune to record and/or perform with include: Hot Tuna, Ahmad Jamal, Ted Dunbar, Michelle Shocked, Paul Simon, Dewey Redman, Frank Kimbrough, Dave Douglas, David Sancious, Mark Feldman, Karl Berger, Joe Mcphee, Julius Hemphill , Jay Anderson, Istvan Grenesco, Honi Coles, Percy Heath, Roswell Rudd, Phil Lesh, David Torn, Levon Helm, Bill Frisell, Fonda/Stevens group, Herb Robertson, Carlos Santana, Omar Tamez, Remi Alvarez, Dry Jack, Art Lande, John d’Earth, Bob Weir, Greg Allman, Marcel Monroe, Tony Levin, Garth Hudson, Jimmy Vivino, amongst many, many others.

  • Jerome Harris

    Jerome Harris has had a notable decades-long presence in the music world as an incisive stylist and a valued versatile collaborator on both guitar and bass guitar. Harris’s first major professional performing experience came as bass guitarist with iconic jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins in 1978; from 1988 to 1994 he was featured on guitar with Rollins.  He has performed on six continents, working with Jack DeJohnette, David Krakauer, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Leni Stern, Martha Redbone, Ray Anderson, Julius Hemphill, Amina Claudine Myers, Ned Rothenberg, Oliver Lake, Joel Harrison, and many others in jazz and jazz-adjacent contexts.  

    Jerome Harris appears on over sixty recordings; his formative musical experiences include blues, folk, gospel, and a range of other American music genres.  He has taught at Hampshire College, Lehman College (City University of New York) and William Paterson University. He studied at Harvard College (A.B. 1973, Social Relations) and New England Conservatory of Music (B.M. with honors, 1977, Jazz Guitar).

Jam Room Coordinators

  • Kyle Esposito

    Recognized as a genre-hopping guitarist, bassist and vocalist, the “wildly eclectic” (John Burdick) Esposito has performed and recorded with countless local, national and international artists spanning genres ranging from latin jazz to folk, funk to avant-garde, blues to americana. Most recently, he has co-produced and played on recordings by the cinematic instrumental outfit Nelson Esposito Quintana and the Memphis and Muscle Shoals-influenced Jay Collins and the Northern Resistance.

  • Jeff Siegel

    Siegel teaches Jazz drumming and jazz ensembles at The New School for Jazz & Contemporary Music, SUNY New Paltz as well as at Western Connecticut State University and Vassar College.  He’s performed and/or recorded w/Sir Roland Hanna, Dave Douglas, John Medeski, John Scofield, Mose Allison, Jack DeJohnette, Levin Bros., Karl Berger, Kenny Burrell, South African Tribute Big Band, Feya Faku, & more. He endorses Canopus Drums, Beato Bags and Vic Firth Drum Sticks.

  • Rich Syracuse

    Rich Syracuse has been a mainstay on the New York area scene for more than four decades. He was the winner of the prestigious Congress Of Strings Award. Going on to receive Bachelor of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music in New York City. Rich performed with The Group for Contemporary Music under the Conductors Charles Wournin and Harvey Solberger, The Hartford Ballet and the New Jersey Lyric Opera co. Early Jazz groups include Pianist’s John Mehegan, Joey Calderazzo, Ted Rosenthal, and Bruce Barth. Rich had been the Bassist for Pianist Lee Shaw for over 22 years. He is the Professor for String and Electric Bass Studies. Rich has toured throughout Europe, South America and Southern Africa.  As well as touring, Rich is an in demand Bassist throughout thenortheast region of the USA.

  • Eric Parker

    Eric Parker is a world class drummer, producer and composer. For the last 40 years he has toured the world and made countless records and drummed at sold out stadiums, theaters and concert halls.
    Eric has played with many musical legends including; Joe Cocker, Steve Winwood, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Ian Hunter, John Sebastian and many others. Eric Parker grew up in a home permeated with music and art, and creativity. Following his father’s footsteps, he became a drummer whose second career is art.