Returning artists were Andrus Madsen, Harold Charon, and Kevin Harris. New talent to the Summit: Hidemi Akaiwa, Sylvia Berry, Leo Blanco, Dennis Montgomery III and Utar Artun.
Hidemi Akaiwa
Fasten your seatbelts because you are likely to have never heard music like what keyboardist and composer Hidemi Akaiwa performs. Her passion is to create a new art form infusing the tenets of Japanese Zen with the sounds of jazz and microtonal contemporary classical music. At the age of 30, she shifted from a successful corporate career to focus on jazz music. She received a full scholarship to Berklee, where she took part in the college’s Global Jazz Institute, Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Planet MicroJam Institute, and Interdisciplinary Arts Institute. These experiences have allowed her to study with world-class musicians including Danilo Pérez, Kenny Werner, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Billy Childs, David Fiuczynski, and many others. She just returned from a tour of Guatemala with the Screaming Headless Torsos, but that’s another story! Click here to see/hear.
Kevin Harris & Fabio Rojas
Harold Charon
Harold Charon performed at last year’s Summit and just blew the house down. His talent can only be described as genius. His schedule has become quite full but we were lucky to bring him back this year Originally from Havana, he began piano lessons at 5 years old. Exuding musicianship decades beyond his years, he went on a Canadian tour which included the Halifax Jazz Festival and received training from Fred Hersh, Taylor Eigsty, Billy Childs and the late great jazz master Chick Corea. Crossing genres, Harold has worked with a variety of artists including Leo Vera, La Cruzada, and Los Clasicos. In 2016 he joined Janio Abreu and Aire D’ Concierto, where he worked as a pianist and composer for Ruy Lopez-Nussa y La Academia. Currently, he is finishing his studies at Berklee, majoring in jazz composition and performance. His music features influences from Latin, Salsa, Jazz and Timba. Timba is a Cuban genre of music based on Cuban son with salsa, American funk/R&B, and the strong influence of Afro-Cuban folkloric music. Chucho Valdez, bandleader of Irakere is considered one of the founders of the style.
LEO BLANCO
The music of the pianist and composer pulses with global rhythmic elements influenced equally by his South American roots and European classical traditions interwoven with improvisatory developments. Blanco was born in the Venezuelan Andes where he absorbed folk music genres that were a mix of Afro-Caribbean, North American and European musical styles. By age eleven he was a violinist in the Merida Youth Symphony Orchestra. In 1996, his interest in world music and jazz brought him to Boston’s Berklee College of Music and he later earned a Master’s Degree in Composition at New England Conservatory. In 1997 Blanco became the first Latin American to win to the prestigious Boston Jazz Society Award. The next year, he received the Billboard Grant Award for his commitment, achievement and contribution to society through music. Currently, he is a faculty member at Berklee College of Music.
Blanco has shared the stage with major international jazz artists including Terence Blanchard, Pat Metheny, Chucho Valdez (Irakere) and Joao Bosco. He has performed at numerous festivals including the Montreaux Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Edinburgh International Festival and the Latino Festival and at the Kennedy Center. Blanco has produced and composed four albums under his name. Appearing with Leo are bassist Fernando Huego and drummer Gen Yoshimura.
Fernando Huergo is a bassist, composer, and educator from Cordoba, Argentina, now based in Boston. He has recorded over 140 albums, including 11 as a leader. Fernando has toured and given clinics in North, Central and South America, Europe and Asia. An active performer on the jazz scene, he currently plays with Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos, MOZIK, Mehmet Sanlikol, Daniel Ian Smith, Pablo Ablanedo, El Eco, Macuco Quintet, Leo Blanco, Fernando Brandao, Yulia Musayelyan, Carlos Averhoff, Maxim Lubarsky, Claudio Ragazzi, and Giovani Molten. He has performed with the bands of Luciana Souza, Cesar Camargo Mariano, Danilo Perez, Marta Gomez, Dave Valentín, Hendrick Meurkens, Dave Liebman, Dave Samuels, Joe Beck, and many others.
He has played alongside great musicians such as Tom Harrell, Dave Kikoski, Joey Calderazzo, Paquito D’Rivera, Randy Brecker, Rick Margitza, Kenny Werner, David Sanchez, Mike Mainieri, John Riley, Mike Clark, Don Braden, Mike Stern, Dave Weckl, Don Byron, Giovanni Hidalgo, Jerry Gonzalez, Horacio Hernandez, Bill O’Connell, Richie Flores, Paulo Braga, Romero Lubambo, Portinho, Claudio Roditi, Raul Carnota, Juan Quinteros, Lucho Hoyos, and with some of the most influential musicians of his generation like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Ben Monder, Mark Turner, Chris Cheek, Miguel Zenon, Jeff Ballard, Antonio Sanchez, Jorge Rossi, Seamus Blake and Dafnis Prieto and Boston stars Billy Pierce, Jerry Bergonzi, and George Garzone.
He has also performed and recorded with pop stars like Chayanne and Sandra Mihanovich. Fernando Huergo has performed with his quintet at the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival, and Cordoba International Jazz Festival in Argentina, as well as at Alexanderplatz Jazz Club in Rome, Italy, and Sunside Jazz in Paris, France, The Regattabar in Cambridge, MA and Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC, among others. Fernando is a professor in the Bass Department at Berklee College of Music, since 1996, and an adjunct faculty at Tufts University since 2001. A dedicated educator, he has given clinics in Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Canada, Portugal, England, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia, Israel, and in many cities in the United States. Fernando graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1992, and has also studied at New England Conservatory. He studied with Charlie Banacos, Jerry Bergonzi, Cecil McBee, George Rusell, Whit Browne, Oscar Stagnaro and Bruce Gertz, among others.
Gen Yoshimura is a drummer/composer/educator from Japan. He moved to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music (BM) and Longy School of Music at Bard College (MM), and has lived there ever since.
Throughout his musical career, he has been given opportunities to share the stage with several internationally acclaimed artists including Fernando Huergo, Walter Smith, Kris Davis, John Lockwood, Oscar Stagnaro, Rick Dimuzio, Daniel Ian Smith, Nate Radley, Ernesto Diaz, Manolo Mairena, Gonzalo Grau, Rebecca Cline, Gilson Schachnik, Yulia Musayelyan, Jim Kelly, Fernando Brandao, Maxim Lubarsky, Fabiola Mendez, Eduardo Betancourt, Andy Voelker, Matt Jenson, Doug Olsen, Alexei Tsiganov, Angel Subero, Zahili Zamora, Fryderyk HD, SONMASS, Bruno Raberg Tentet, Allan Chase Quartet, Leo Blanco Trio, La Pura Vida, Santiago Bosch Trio, Pritesh Walia Trio, and many others.
A major highlight of his career includes being featured alongside Pat Metheny, Fred Hersch, and Bobby Watson in Jazz Artistry Now (JAN)’s Best of Jazz 2020 for his drumming in Fernando Huergo’s Big Band album “The Possibility of Change”.
In addition to his extensive work as a sideman, Gen also performs and records original compositions with his own band, many of which you can find on Spotify, Youtube, and the Discography tab above.
He is on the faculty at New England Conservatory’s Preparatory Program and Continuing Education Program, where he teaches ensembles and private instruction. He has also led clinics and masterclasses for prestigious institutions such as Berklee College of Music in the institution’s 2023 Summer Drum/Percussion Workshop and its 2018 Workshop & Audition Tour in Quito, Ecuador. In addition to his work with his alma mater, Gen has led masterclasses in Groton School, and Lethbridge University. He also has been teaching private lessons regularly for years.
Dennis Montgomery III
Montgomery grew up singing and playing in Baptist churches around the upper Louisiana area under the tutelage of his father and mother, By the time he was nine years old he was proficient enough on the Hammond B3 Organ to get hired to work alongside his father. Montgomery came to Berklee College of Music in 1983. Shortly after his arrival at Berklee, he headed for the gospel choir which had only recently come into existence. While Berklee’s education is focused on jazz, “We know that jazz has its roots in the negro spiritual, which is gospel music. Gospel is also the mother of a lot of other secular music that America has produced.” Gospel at Berklee grew rapidly and when Mongomery graduated he assumed the direction of the Reverence Gospel Ensemble as a full-time faculty member. Montgomery believes that the choir is a fundamental ingredient of the American experience for international students, which is probably why students from all over Asia, South America, Europe, and Australia all come to be a part of the choir. Montgomery states, “When I was young, I had to learn European musical styles. So when foreign students come to Berklee, I think it is important to educate them in a true form of American music.” The choir has served as a catalyst for some premiere voices in the music industry such as Paula Cole, Lalah Hathaway, Susan Tedeschi, Claude Kelly, Rob Lewis and Mark Whitfield.
Utar Artun
On drums is Vlade Guigni from the Dominican Republic. “Vlade Guigni is an inspiring drummer … He is extremely versatile and musically mature far beyond his years. … I eagerly anticipate his contributions to the music world!”- Terri Lyne Carrington. 3 time Grammy award winner
A producer, composer, audio engineer, and educator. He has performed with a variety of artists from Jazz, Pop, Latin, and Contemporary Christian music such as Dave Liebman, George Garzone, Anat Cohen, Gerald Clayton, Darcy James Argue, Aubrey Johnson, Tia Fuller, Leo Blanco, David Gilmore, Pavel Nuñez, Enrique Gonzalez Müller, Lilly Goodman, Danilo Montero, and Marcos Yaroide among others. Vlade holds a bachelor’s in Music Production and Engineering and a master’s in Contemporary Performance. Vlade released a solo album called “Elevation” and he’s currently working on his second album, several projects in the Boston region, and staff accompanist at Berklee. He also runs his own music school and recording studio “Selah Music Studio”.
Andrus Madsen
Returning from his remarkable performance last year, Newton’s own Andrus Madsen is well-known internationally in early music circles and performs on the organ, harpsichord clavichord and fortepiano. He is the founding director of Newton Baroque. Originally from Provo, Utah, Andrus received a Bachelor’s degree in organ performance from Brigham Young University and went on to the Eastman School of Music, where he completed a Master’s degree in Musicology, and a Masters and Doctorate in harpsichord performance. Madsen is known for his eloquent Baroque style improvisations. His recording of keyboard music by Pachelbel has received critical acclaim. “Superb recordings of superb instruments by a musician who deserves to be better known.” (Michael Barone of pipedreams).
Sylvia Berry
Sylvia Berry is one of North America’s leading exponents of historical keyboard instruments. A Philadelphia native based in Boston, she has spent nearly twenty years playing countless types of fortepianos, harpsichords, and organs, including some noteworthy antiques. Her recording of Haydn’s “London Sonatas” on an 1806 Broadwood & Son grand for the Acis label drew critical acclaim; a reviewer in Early Music America proclaimed her “a complete master of rhetoric, whether in driving passagework or in cantabile adagios,” while a review in Fanfare stated, “To say that Berry plays these works with vim, vigor, verve, and vitality, is actually a bit of an understatement.” Of her concertizing, Cleveland Classical recently enthused: “Her splendid playing took her up and down the keyboard in lightning-fast scales and passagework, and her thrilling full-voiced chords allowed the fortepiano to assert itself as a real solo instrument.” Ms. Berry is known not only for her exciting performances but also for the engaging commentary she provides about the music and instruments she plays. She is also a published scholar who’s written and lectured on the performance practices of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as the sociological phenomena surrounding the music of this period. In addition to performing with ensembles such as Les Délices, Ars Antiqua, and the Chamber Orchestra of Boston she is the curator of her own period instrument ensemble, The Berry Collective, which has performed at venues and series such as The Museum of Fine Arts, The Princeton University Art Museum, Monadnock Music, Museum Concerts of Rhode Island, and the Portland Early Music Festival. She’s performed solo recitals for Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque, Cambridge Society of Early Music, Oberlin Conservatory, Providence College, and Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory, among others. In May 2020 she will join a “Beethoven Sonata Marathon” in New York presented by the American Classical Orchestra, and will also join the faculty of the Academy of Fortepiano Performance in Hunter, NY. Despite getting a late start at the piano – she began lessons at age thirteen – she attended the New England Conservatory and holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory (BM in Piano, MM in Historical Keyboard Instruments) and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands.