SFJAZZ Collective

The SFJAZZ Collective is an all-star award-winning supergroup comprising nine of the finest performers/composers at work in Jazz today. The current ensemble features Gretchen Parlato on vocals, Martin Luther McCoy on vocals, Chris Potter on saxophones, David Sánchez on saxophones, Etienne Charles on trumpet, Warren Wolf on vibraphone, Edward Simon on keyboards, Matt Brewer on bass and Kendrick Scott on drums.

SFJAZZ Collective

Founded by SFJAZZ in 2004, the SFJAZZ Collective is a leaderless group and a democratic composer’s workshop that represents what’s happening now in Jazz. The Collective’s mission is to perform fresh arrangements of works by a modern master and newly commissioned pieces by each member. Through this pioneering approach, simultaneously honoring music’s greatest figures while championing Jazz’s up-to-the-minute directions, the SFJAZZ Collective embodies SFJAZZ’s commitment to Jazz as a living, ever-relevant art form. Over their fifteen-year existence, the SFJAZZ Collective has honored the music of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, Stevie Wonder, Chick Corea, Joe Henderson, Michael Jackson, Miles Davis, António Carlos Jobim and Sly Stone, and has created over 100 new arrangements and original compositions.

The Collective rehearses intensively every fall at the SFJAZZ Center, where it begins an annual tour that takes it across the country and Europe. As Downbeat wrote, “the octet boasts as much or more collective talent, firepower and critical acclaim than any other Jazz ensemble going.”

The SFJAZZ Collective has gone through numerous line up changes over the years and has featured Bobby Hutcherson, Joshua Redman, Miguel Zenón, Eric Harland, Mark Turner, Matt Penman, Avishai Cohen, Sean Jones, Andre Hayward, Stefon Harris, Dave Douglas, Nicholas Payton, Joe Lovano, Josh Roseman, Renee Rosnes, Jeff Ballard, Robert Hurst, Brian Blade, Martin Luther McCoy, Obed Calvaire, Matt Brewer, Adam Rogers and others.

CHRIS POTTER
MUSIC DIRECTOR, SOPRANO & TENOR SAXOPHONE | Member 2021–Present
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 Music Director and this is the first time the SFJAZZ Collective has had a member in a music director position in over a decade.

DAVID SÁNCHEZ
TENOR SAXOPHONE | Member 2012—Present
Since his early exposure with Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nations Orchestra, Puerto Rican tenor saxophone virtuoso David Sánchez has become a 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 Award 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.

ETIENNE CHARLES
TRUMPET | Member 2018—Present
Hailed by JazzTimes as a “daring improviser who delivers with heart wrenching lyricism” (Bill Milkowski), Trinidad-born Etienne Charles is an artist deeply versed in the New Orleans trumpet tradition. In June 2012 he was written into the US Congressional Record for his musical contributions to Trinidad & Tobago and was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2015. His 2016 album San Jose Suite was a musical discourse on the effects of colonialism in three San Jose locations — Costa Rica, California and Trinidad, and his newest album, Carnival: The Sound of a People Vol. 1, is an excursion into the grooves, chants and rituals of Carnival in his native Trinidad & Tobago. His latest work as a producer, composer, arranger, trumpeter and percussionist, Petite Afrique by Somi won Outstanding Jazz Album at the 2018 NAACP Image Awards. He is currently Associate Professor of Jazz Trumpet at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

WARREN WOLF
VIBRAPHONE | Member 2013—Present
Warren Wolf is a multi-instrumentalist from Baltimore, MD. Wolf began playing vibraphone, marimba, drums and piano at age three, studying at Peabody Institute preparatory program 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 on 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. Warren has released five albums on the Mack Avenue label including his 2020 holiday release Christmas Vibes.

EDWARD SIMON
PIANO | Member 2010—Present
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 at WBGO.org. His latest album is 25 Years, a curated career retrospective documenting his quarter century of music.

MATT BREWER
BASS | Member 2018–Present

Matt Brewer was born in Oklahoma City and grew up in Albuquerque NM, 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 then went on to study at the Juilliard School. He’s 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.

KENDRICK A.D. SCOTT
DRUMS | Member 2021–Present
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-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 faculty at the Manhattan School Of Music.

MARTIN LUTHER MCCOY
VOCALS, GUITAR | Member 2019—Present

Rising to international attention for his extensive work with The Roots, singer, songwriter, and San Francisco-native Martin Luther McCoy is on a mission to bring his signature mix of blues-drenched R&B, funk, rock, and old school soul to audiences worldwide. He founded the Rebel Soul Music label in 1999, releasing five scintillating sessions including The Calling, Live at Arlene’s Grocery, Rebel Soul Music, Extra Terrestrial Brother, and Love is the Hero. McCoy recently released new music including the single “Now” with full-length self-titled album due in August 2019. He has appeared at the SFJAZZ Center and at various venues around the country performing tributes to Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and Otis Redding.

GRETCHEN PARLATO
VOCALS | Joined 2021
Easily among the most accomplished and inventive vocalists of the 21st century, Gretchen Parlato offers an artful communion of space, texture and genre-bending repertoire, influencing a generation of vocalists to honor their voice as part of the instrumental fabric, putting the power of subtlety front and center. She was the first vocalist to be accepted into the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (later renamed as the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance) and won 1st place in the International Vocals Competition by the same name in 2004.

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