SFJAZZ Collective

Musical Director, Soprano & Tenor Saxophone

A Chicago native, Chris Potter is among the most prominent, influential, and visionary artists in jazz, fronting multiple ensembles and collaborating with a staggering list of major artists including Paul Motian, Pat Metheny, Dave Holland, Zakir Hussain, Herbie Hancock, Jim Hall, Steely Dan and the Mingus Big Band. A veteran of over 150 recordings, he has topped numerous DownBeat Critics Polls, received a GRAMMY Award nomination, and has led or co-led over 20 albums including his latest Edition Records release, There Is A Tide. Potter also assumes the role of Musical Director for the SFJAZZ Collective, the first time the Collective has had a member in a musical director position in over a decade.

Tenor Saxophone

Since his early exposure with Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra, Puerto Rican tenor saxophone virtuoso David Sánchez has become one of the most celebrated instrumentalists in jazz, recording nine albums as a leader and winning a Latin GRAMMY Award for his 2004 orchestral session, Coral. The five-time Grammy nominee has performed with a roster of greats including Charlie Haden, Eddie Palmieri, Roy Haynes, Tom Harrell and countless others. Sánchez has an impressive résumé as an educator, conducting master classes, workshops and residencies at the world’s top universities and conservatories. His latest album is Ninety Miles: Live at Cubadisco, a project recorded in Cuba and co-led by trumpeter Christian Scott and vibraphonist Stefon Harris.

Piano

Edward Simon was born in the coastal town of Punta Cardón, Venezuela, where he grew up in a family of musicians. Settling in New York City in 1989, he played with numerous jazz masters, including Herbie Mann, Paquito D’Rivera, Bobby Hutcherson, Bobby Watson, Terence Blanchard and Don Byron. He has produced fifteen critically-acclaimed albums as a leader for Sunnyside, CAM JAZZ, Criss Cross, and various other labels. His 2016 album, Latin American Songbook, won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album, and his 2018 release Sorrows and Triumphs was declared “unmissable” in Nate Chinen’s Take Five column on WBGO.org. His latest album is 25 Years, a curated career retrospective documenting his quarter century of music.

Drums

Named “Rising Star – Drums” by DownBeat magazine and a “Drummer Whose Time is Now” by The New York Times, Kendrick A.D. Scott is a premier drummer and composer of his generation. The Houston-born Scott has toured worldwide and recorded with artists including Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard, Marcus Miller, Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, The Crusaders, Joshua Redman, Robert Glasper, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, Gretchen Parlato, and the Blue Note All-Stars. Kendrick’s compositions have been recorded on GRAMMY award-winning records, and he won a 2017 Chamber Music of America New Works Grant funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. He has released five albums as a bandleader with his band Oracle, The Source (2007), Reverence (2011), Conviction (2013), We Are The Drum (2015), and A Wall Becomes A Bridge on Blue Note records. Scott is on the faculty at the Manhattan School Of Music.

Bass

Matt Brewer was born in Oklahoma City and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, surrounded by a family of musicians and artists. At the age of 10, Matt fell in love with the bass and began a lifelong study of music. He graduated high school from the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to study at the Juilliard School. He has travelled the world playing in the bands of Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, Dave Binney, Gerald Clayton, Ben Wendel, Aaron Parks, Vijay Iyer, Dhafer Youssef, Antonio Sanchez, Mark Turner, Steve Lehman, Ben Monder, and Lage Lund, among many others. He has been a frequent guest lecturer at the Banff Center and is an adjunct faculty member at the New School University.

Trumpet

A GRAMMY award-winning trumpeter and composer hailing from Queens, New York, Rodriguez was inspired to pursue music by his father, drummer Roberto Rodriguez, and came up through the music programmes at the University of Miami and the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at the New School in Manhattan. He has recorded and performed alongside a stunning list of greats including Joe Lovano, Quincy Jones, Wynton Marsalis, and Chico O’Farrill, and has had lengthy associations with Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and Chick Corea, with whom he won a GRAMMY Award as part of his Spanish Heart Band. Rodriguez has recorded four albums with his pianist brother Robert and a pair of releases as a leader including his latest, 2021’s Pathways. He is currently on the faculty at NYU and The Juilliard School.

Vibraphone

Warren Wolf is a multi-instrumentalist from Baltimore, Maryland. Wolf began playing vibraphone, marimba, drums, and piano at age three, studying at Peabody Institute preparatory programme and the Baltimore School for the Arts with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra member John Locke. After graduating in 1997, he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music in Boston for studies with master vibraphonist Dave Samuels, graduating in 2001 and returning as an instructor from 2003–2005. Warren became an active musician in the national scene after leaving Berklee, working with Bobby Watson, Tia Fuller, Christian Scott, Donal Fox, Christian McBride, and Karriem Riggins and his own Wolfpack band. He has been a member of the SFJAZZ Collective since 2013.

Warren has released five albums on the Mack Avenue label, including his 2020 holiday release, Christmas Vibes.