Willie D

Born: November 20, 1987

Tim Shaghoian

Born: February 28, 1991

Tim Shaghoian is a Los Angeles-based saxophonist and composer. He released his debut album, Gentle Beacons, in 2020 on Origin's OA2 Records. Gentle Beacons features 9 of Tim's original compositions and a creative reimagining of the beloved jazz standard “My Foolish Heart”. All About Jazz called the release “a well-crafted work of modern jazz.” Tim performs regularly in the LA area and has had the opportunity to work with a number of the most respected creative musicians in LA, such as Mark Ferber, Vardan Ovsepian, Darek Oles, and Billy Mohler

Joan Hutton

Born: May 18, 1969

Joan Hutton is a woodwind performer, composer and music educator residing in Minneapolis and hailing from Toronto, Canada. Her varied musical interests have led her over the years to classical, jazz, funk, free improvisation, pit orchestras and more. Joan has released two albums of original music on Shifting Paradigm Records with co-leader Sue Orfield: Take That Back (2022) and Splash (2024). She is also a long time member of the Ancia Saxophone Quartet, with recordings on the Naxos and Albany labels.

Tara Davidson

Born: 1979

Tara Davidson is a JUNO Award-winning alto and soprano saxophonist who has performed around the world at such prestigious venues as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, the acclaimed North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, the JZ Jazz Club in Shanghai, China, and The Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C.

As a bandleader, Davidson has produced seven recordings since 2004 and performed on approximately forty recordings as a side musician. Five of her seven recordings as a leader or co-leader (Carn Davidson 9) have been nominated by the JUNO Awards for “Jazz Album of the Year”. Davidson has been associated with seven additional JUNO nominations for her work as a side musician with Ernesto Cervini's "Joy" project, Andrew Downing’s Otterville, Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop (x2), the Mike Murley Septet, CBC Records’ “Jazz Legends Live” project, and Jens Lindemann’s Order of Canada Band (Yamaha Big Band member). In 2020, Davidson won a JUNO Award for Jazz Album of the Year: Group as a member of Ernesto Cervini’s Turboprop.

David Borgo

Born: February 8, 1970

David Borgo started playing alto saxophone at the age of 8. He had formative jazz experiences growing up in the Washington D.C. area, and went on to earn his B.M. in Jazz Studies at Indiana University, under the tutelage of renown jazz educator David N. Baker.

After graduation, David began touring widely, and his travel experiences in Turkey, Israel, Morocco, and more, sparked an interest in "world music" and the academic field of Ethnomusicology. He went on to earn M.A. and Ph.D. degress in the field from UCLA, studying with one of the world's preeminent Ethnomusicology faculty.

Sohrab Saadat

Born: April 1, 1953

A Comprehensive Biography of SoSaLa

The early years

Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi (aka SoSaLa) was born to Iranian parents in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1953. However, following the sudden death of his business partner, Sohrab’s father had to close down their joint business and, on the advice of a family member and when Sohrab was just three months of age, the Saadat Ladjevardi family moved to live in Hamburg, Germany. There Sohrab’s father established an export trade company called Iran Hamburg.  Growing up in Germany, Sohrab’s early lessons on piano ended abruptly, when his teacher found she couldn’t abide his style of playing.

Harrison Argatoff

Harrison Argatoff is a Canadian tenor saxophonist and composer based in Toronto. A 2018 graduate of The University of Toronto’s jazz program, his music combines the study of jazz, classical, and free-improvised music to to cultivate a versatile, controlled, yet distinctly personal sound. Having grown up a Doukhobour, in the interior of British Columbia, teachings of pacifism, communal music making, and respect for life and nature deeply influence his personal and artistic endeavours.

After Five Jazz

Carl Schultz

Born: June 28, 1982

Originally from the Philadelphia area, the career of saxophonist Carl Schultz has seen him as a soloist, composer, woodwind specialist, educator, and historian. Schultz began this journey studying with modern saxophonists such as Ben Schachter and composer Norman David. Their unique approaches to improvisational music blended with the sounds of the Philadelphia Jazz scene where Schultz was spending his time listening to great masters of the music.

Schultz moved to New York to pursue an education and received a Bachelors of Music degree from the conservatory of music at SUNY Purchase College before returning to Philadelphia and completing a Masters of Music degree at The University of The Arts

Ikechi Onyenaka

Born: December 2, 1996

   Ikechi Onyenaka is an American jazz saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and recording artist from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania on the rise in modern jazz. Although his primary instrument is the alto saxophone, he also plays the tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, clarinet, piano, keyboard, bass, and drums. As a saxophonist and songwriter, he takes a wide range of influences from the likes of Grover Washington Jr, Kenny Garrett, Robert Glasper, Stevie Wonder, and J Cole. Through emotionally driven saxophone melodies, atmospheric piano chords, and immaculate bass lines, Ikechi Onyenaka has truly created his own lane in modern jazz with his original music.