On tour from NYC, drummer Sylvia Cuenca and bassist Essiet Okon Essiet join forces with bi-coastal pianist Ben Stolorow.

Sylvia grew up in San Jose and comes out from Manhattan frequently to gig up and down the coast and be with family, fitting in many wonderful shows at Bird & Beckett to the delight of our audiences. She was with Joe Henderson’s quartet for four years and with Clark Terry’s band for seventeen, has worked in trios with bassists Charlie Haden and George Mraz, and has been a first call drummer in NYC for decades.

As for Essiet, he was born in Nebraska and grew up in Portland and worked in Europe in the early 1980s with Famoudou Don Moye, moving to NYC in 1983. There, he came to fame in Bobby Watson’s band and along the way he’s played with Abdullah Ibrahim, Art Blakey, Kenny Barron, Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton and a host of other jazz greats.

Ben is a fantastic young, San Francisco-based pianist with two decades of high level work under his belt, acclaimed for his playing and compositions. For years, he has been bi-coastal, studying in New York with Fred Hersch, Stanley Cowell, James Williams, and David Hazeltine and gigging frequently. Here, he’s in high demand as leader and sideman, and is on faculty at Berkeley’s California Jazz Conservatory.