Baltimore Jazz Futures: An Ethel's Place Panel Discussion and Jam Session

Sean Jones (Trumpet) is Professor and Richard and Elizabeth Case Chair of Jazz Studies at the Peabody Institute. Before coming to Peabody, Sean served as the Chair of the Brass Department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Sean turned a 6-month stint with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra into an offer from Wynton Marsalis for a permanent position as lead trumpeter, a post he held from 2004 until 2010. In 2015 Jones became a member of the SFJAZZ Collective where he was a member until 2018. During this time, Sean produced and released eight recordings on the Mack Avenue Records. Sean has been prominently featured with a number of artists, recording and/or performing with many major figures in jazz, including Illinois Jacquet, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Gerald Wilson and Marcus Miller. Sean was selected by Miller, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter for their Tribute to Miles tour in 2011

Charles Covington has performed internationally in Europe and China and has made numerous TV and radio appearances. He was the featured performer for President Carter at the White House and with George Benson on The Tonight Show. Covington’s impressive career includes celebrity performances with Sammy Davis, Jr., Eartha Kitt, Larry King, Henry Kissinger, Redd Foxx, and Flip Wilson. He has recorded and/ or performed with many jazz greats, such as Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Eddie Harris, Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Zook Simms, George Benson, and many others including comedians Redd Fox, Pigmeat Markham, Slappy White, Flip Wilson, and vocalists such as Abbey Lincoln, Eartha Kitt, Shirley Horne, and Ethel Ennis among others. Jazz Pianist in Residence at the Kennedy Center, Covington is a world-renowned Hammond B-3 organ virtuoso and performs there on a regular basis. He served on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory of Music from 1979 through 1999, and served as a full-time professor of music at Howard University in Washington, D.C. from 1999 to 2022. His biography was published in the sixth edition of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, 2000, the most respected publication in the nation recognizing and honoring the nation’s finest teachers.

Whether leading his own dynamic bands, supplying the soul for ensembles across the musical spectrum, embodying the spirit of modern jazz and spiritual sounds or inspiring the next generation of musicians, Grammy-nominated saxophonist, composer, arranger and educator Tim Green is a wide-ranging artist of deep passion and unflagging individuality. He has performed and recorded with some of the most recognized names in jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop and pop music, and has become a saxophonist of choice for many of jazz’s most revered pianists. Based in his native Baltimore, Green has garnered international acclaim while establishing himself as a pillar of his hometown scene. At the same time Green has continued to hone his distinctive, soulful sound on stages across the globe and at the helm of his own ensembles, which feature some of the most vital musicians in contemporary jazz as well as close collaborators from the Baltimore and Washington DC nexus. 2024 will see the long-awaited release of his new album, his first as a leader in more than ten years.

Born and raised in Flint, Mich., Alexandria “Brinae Ali” Bradley is an interdisciplinary artist who believes in using the power of the arts to transform the conditions of the human spirit. Among her many roles as an educator and grassroots organizer, Ali has worked as the artistic director of Tapology, Inc., a youth based outreach program in Flint that believes in preserving the art of tap and jazz culture through education and performance. She has held positions in Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including Shuffle Along: the 1921 Sensation And All That Followed, STOMP, Cotton Club Parade, and Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope.  As a playwright and songwriter, Ali has created award-winning works including her one woman show “Steps," and “Destination Forever: Vol.1 EP.” She recently developed and toured an original work with trumpeter Sean Jones called “Dizzy Spellz,” fusing tap, Bebop, Hip Hop, and Afro Cuban music to articulate the African American experience through the music of Dizzy Gillespie from an Afrofuturistic lens. She is currently scaffolding a new work in progress supported by NEFA National Dance Projects and Johns Hopkins University Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts called the Baby Laurence Legacy Project, which is an archival/performative process to create an integrated work of jazz tap dance and jazz music that investigates and celebrates the artistic and social influences that “Baby Laurence” Donald Jackson had on the culture of Tap Dance and Jazz Music.