Alumni
TJ Reddick
TJ Reddick is an American musician and educator that specializes in drums. He is a recent graduate from The Juilliard School. He currently resides in New York City, which has led to collaborations with artists including Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Chick Corea, Jon Batiste, Nicholas Payton, Alicia Olatuja, Will Downing, Mwenso and the Shakes, and more. He has performed at venues, festivals including Acropolis of Athens, Radio City Hall, Rose Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Smalls Jazz Club, Blue Note Jazz Club, Smoke Jazz Club, Dizzys, Marciac Jazz Festival, and more.
Langston Oliver
Langston Oliver began playing trumpet at the age of nine. At age ten, he began studying under the late Al Waters, a former saxophone player in the Ray Charles Orchestra. This musical relationship lasted for the next ten years. Under Al Waters’s mentorship, Langston learned jazz history and the fundamentals of music. At age twelve, he was admitted into the Juilliard Jazz Camp, at fifteen he won The Sound of Jazz To Come award at the Stanford Summer Jazz Academy, and at eighteen, he was one of forty-two musicians worldwide to be accepted into the Jazz At Lincoln Center Academy where he studied with world-renowned musician, Wynton Marsalis.
In recent years, Langston was invited to play at the prestigious Jazz club, The Jazz Corner, acclaimed as one of the top 100 great jazz rooms in the world by Downbeat Magazine. And in 2022, he was accepted into the Tribeca Jazz Institute, a three-month intensive program where only one musician per instrument is admitted from around the world.
Currently, Langston is furthering his knowledge of Jazz under the mentorship of John Lumpkin and Ulysses Owens Jr. He has also worked on various albums in different genres and continues to expand his knowledge and expertise in the music world. He hopes to bring inspiration and the love of music to his audiences one song at a time.
Janae Yates
Janae Yates is from Jacksonville, Florida and is majoring in Jazz
Performance at Florida State University. She has been a member of
NYO Jazz, John Lumpkin Institute, the New School’s Summer Jazz
Intensive, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, and has performed at the
Midwest Clinic, Music For All Convention, Jacksonville Jazz Festival,
and Jazz Education Network Conference. She has performed with Ernie Watts, Jimmy Owens, Teddy Adams, Wycliffe Gordon, and Sean Jones and helped win the 42nd annual Downbeat Large Jazz Ensemble Award and the Jacksonville University Jazz Festival. She has studied with John Lumpkin, Jr., Ulysses Owens, Jr., and Leon Anderson, Jr. Janae's goal for the future is to use her studies to become an inspiration to those who want to use art to create change in the world, and to serve as an idol for increased representation of black women within the jazz community.