GRANT RICHARDS
NYC-based pianist Grant Richards is an award-winning jazz performer, composer, and educator able to adapt to a wide range of settings, styles, and genres. A native of Portland, Oregon, Grant began playing piano at the age of eight. By the time he entered college, he had won four Student Music Awards from Downbeat Magazine and recorded his first album as a leader. In 2009, Grant enrolled at Berklee College of Music on a full-tuition Jimmy Lyons Scholarship. He has since shared the stage with Grammy® award-winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Eddie Gomez, and Terri Lyne Carrington, as well as luminaries Simon Phillips, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Valerie Simpson.
JULIEN KNOWLES
Trumpeter of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Class of 2023, Julien Knowles was mentored by numerous legendary jazz artists including Billy Childs, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter. During his time in the full-fellowship graduate program Julien toured internationally with pianist and mentor Herbie Hancock, and currently leads master classes across the country on improvisation, composition, and pedagogy.
Since moving to Los Angeles in 2021, Julien has toured the United States with Louis Cole and performed as a sideman with Sasha Berliner, Gerald Clayton and Billy Mohler. Julien holds a weekly residency at The York, performing alongside David Binney, Justin Brown, and a revolving cast of L.A.’s most coveted jazz musicians. Julien appears on LesGo! by alto saxophonist Devin Daniels and Two Legs Bad— the latest release by ECM recording artist and alto-saxophonist Peter Epstein.
JOESPH FOGLIA
Tenor Saxophonist, Composer and Educator Joseph Foglia has studied under mentors like Bill Charlap, Rich Perry, Dayna Stephens, Steve Nelson, Johnathan Blake and seeks to operate as an educator with the same richness and of wisdom his mentors have shown him. Now primarily based in Harlem NYC, Joseph plays in New York and teaches saxophone lessons. Joseph has played with musicians such as Etienne Charles, Taylor Eigsti, Al Strong, and Michael Ode, and has been described as “an imaginative and very advanced composer/arranger for someone of his young age.” Dr. David Demsey, New jersey Jazz Society Magazine.
RAFAEL ENCISO
Rafael Enciso is an award-winning bassist and composer based in New York City, recognized for his striking voice on the instrument and his dynamic range as a collaborator. Since arriving in New York, he has performed and recorded with a wide range of respected artists including Dayna Stephens, Miguel Zenón, Ingrid Jensen, Ben Wendel, and Marta Sanchez. A DownBeat Award winner, Rafael’s performances have taken him to major venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Detroit Jazz Festival, and the Jazz Gallery.Enciso’s music draws from the language of modern jazz, weaving in layered compositional structures, rhythmic openness, and an emotional clarity that reflects his wide listening across folk traditions, contemporary improvisation, and beyond. Rafael was recently selected by Jason Moran for the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program and continues to shape a distinct artistic voice. His debut album, Crossfade - featuring Gabriel Chakarji, Miguel Russell, Nicola Caminiti, Jahari Stampley, and produced by Dayna Stephens - will be released on November 14, 2025, through Contagious Music. With a growing list of high-profile collaborations and an emerging discography, Enciso is a compelling presence in the next generation of jazz artists.
NOAH GARABEDIAN
Bass player and composer Noah Garabedian seeks the human connection in the collaborative aspects of art, and is informed by folkloric traditions and stories. He holds a BA in Ethnomusicology from The University of California Los Angeles, and a Master's of Music Performance from New York University. Noah has performed and toured with Ravi Coltrane, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, Andy Milne, Kris Davis, David Virelles, Ralph Alessi, Josh Roseman, Okkervil River, Nir Felder, and Frank LoCrasto. He is a 2025 New Jazz Works Grant recipient from Chamber Music America; 2022 Calouste Gulbenkian In View Grant recipient; 2021 Fellow for Creative Armenia/AGBU; 2011 ISB Double Bass Competition finalist; 2007 finalist for the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz graduate program; 2006 John Coltrane National Scholarship recipient. Additionally, he has received two Arts Envoy grants from the US State Department to perform for the public, teach workshops, and collaborate with local musicians throughout Asia and Central Europe.
BILLY MOHLER
Billy Mohler is an exploratory jazz bassist who has also amassed wide-ranging credits in the pop world as a GRAMMY-nominated writer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and session player, working with Dolly Parton, Macy Gray, Lady Gaga, Nile Rogers, Sia, Awolnation, Mavis Staples, Kelly Clarkson, Steven Tyler, Jon Brion and a host of others. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Mohler attended the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as one of only five students, studying with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and other luminaries. His 2019 debut Focus, hailed by Nextbop.com as “an incredibly free, unconstrained and inventive record filled with exciting twists and turns and constant detours,” marked the auspicious start of his quartet featuring tenor saxophonist Chris Speed and Kneebody members Shane Endsley (trumpet) and Mohler’s childhood friend Nate Wood (drums). The group has followed up with its 2022 sophomore release Anatomy, a sonically inventive effort that highlights the players’ loose, raw, indeterminate chemistry as well as Mohler’s rough-hewn, insistently rhythmic compositions.
EDEN LADIN
Since his arrival on the New York scene in 2008, Eden Ladin has become a quiet force of harmonic complexity and lyricism. Playing with a sensitivity that only comes from embracing self-reflection and collective exploration, the pianist, keyboard player and composer has earned recognition from some of the music’s most prestigious publications and institutions, and collaborated with a range of artists, including Avishai Cohen (bass), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Kimberly Thompson, Ben Street, Joel Frahm, Nir Felder, Eli Degibri, Mark Guiliana, Donny McCaslin, Joe Martin, Justin Brown, Marcus Gilmore and Charles Altura. Eden also has recorded with a number of distinctive voices, including Wallace Roney, Eric Harland, Ben Wendel, Myron Walden, Darren Barrett, Gilad Hekselman, Ari Hoenig, Omer Avital, Philip Dizack, Joe Sanders, Dayna Stephens, Orlando le Fleming, Harish Raghavan, Marcos Varela, John Ellis and Camila Meza.
PLUTO JUICE
For nearly 15 years, having achieved international renown as a saxophonist (#1 Rising Star Tenor, 2019 Downbeat Critics Poll), Dayna Stephens has worked assiduously to create a musical voice on the Akai Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI). Following in the footsteps of Bob Mintzer and the late Michael Brecker, and like his EWI-exploring peers Morgan Guerin, Mark Shim and Seamus Blake, Stephens has featured the EWI in select contexts with his own bands, on Gilad Hekselman’s 2019 release Further Chaos and other projects. With Pluto Juice, co-led and co-produced by drummer and composer Anthony Fung, Stephens turns the spotlight fully on EWI for the first time, in an adventurous electric quartet setting with the stellar Canadian musicians Andrew Marzotto (guitar) and Rich Brown (bass). One of the band’s first pieces, “Approaching Pluto,” was composed by Stephens when NASA’s New Horizons craft completed its long-awaited flyby of the dwarf planet in the summer of 2015. The music that followed was conceived specifically for the group, and the theme of space travel stuck. Stephens’ “Welcome to Our Snow Globe” leads off with a focus on Earth......
Founding Member
DAYNA STEPHENS
Dayna Stephens is globally recognized as a saxophonist, composer and arranger, and is the first place recipient of the 2019 DownBeat Critics Poll in the category Rising Star—Tenor Saxophone. His highly anticipated 10th album, Right Now! Live at the Village Vanguard, will be released on October 3, 2020 and features Aaron Parks, Ben Street, and Greg Hutchinson. Earlier this year he released his 9th album, Liberty, to critical acclaim. It is his first trio recording that features Ben Street and Eric Harland. Both 2020 albums were produced by Matt Pierson and released on Dayna’s own label, Contagious Music. NPR’s Kevin Whitehead had this to say about Liberty, “Dayna Stephens can cry and rip it up on tenor, but at heart, he’s a streamlined melodic player. His handsome down-the-middle tone is not too heavy or light, though he can lean either way. His sound is sleek, with very light vibrato. And the lines he improvises are uncluttered and well-organized. His horn sings”. J. Hunter of Nippertown says,“Stephens’ latest outing—recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s history-filled studio—delivers an elegant, uncompromising look at how less can definitely be more.” In describing Liberty’s trio format Jay N. Miller from The Patriot Ledger applauds, “while the concept may seem esoteric, the triumph of Stephens’ latest work is how accessible and even intoxicating it is.”
