Benito Gonzalez/Lenny White/Buster Williams/Nicholas Payton
Benito Gonzalez [piano]
Buster Williams [bass]
Lenny White [drums]
Nicholas Payton [trumpet]
Pianist Benito Gonzalez, two times Grammy nominee, is an internationally beloved artist who combines a long lineage of American jazz traditions with rhythms from around the world. Benito Gonzalez is an exhilarating pianist who won the 2005 Great America Jazz Piano Competition and was honored in 2020 to be a Steinway & Sons artist for “his sound [that] is recognizable for the powerful rhythm section and Afro-Latin patterns he prioritizes across his projects.” The Venezuela-born, New York-based artist grew up playing traditional Venezuelan folk music with his family before absorbing the inventiveness of such pianists as Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett who inspired him to join in the explorations on the instrument.
Leonard “Lenny” White III is one of the founding fathers of the jazz-rock movement and is a four-time GRAMMY Award winner. Lenny is an American jazz fusion drummer who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. Lenny has played and collaborated with artists such as Joe Henderson, Gato Barbieri Gil Evans, Stan Getz, Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, and Chaka Khan.
GRAMMY Award winner Buster Williams is a prodigious artist whose playing knows no limits. He has played, recorded and collaborated with jazz giants such as Art Blakey, Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Chet Baker, Chick Corea, Dexter Gordon, Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Nancy Wilson, Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Sarah Vaughan and Bobby Hutcherson, to name a few.
As a leading voice in American popular music, the Grammy Award-winning Nicholas Payton is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer, producer, arranger, essayist, and social activist who defies musical and artistic categories. He received his first Grammy nomination in 1997 for the album Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton, and for the category of Best Instrumental Solo, which found him winning the award that year.
