``Mike Bono is one of the most promising young guitarist I have come across. He has formidable skills, maturity, and a great imagination.`` Ben Monder Mike Bono is a guitarist currently living in NYC, where he is playing, teaching, composing, and recording. He has performed at venues in the city such as Carnegie Hall, Town Hall Theater, Birdland, The Blue Note, and many other clubs around town. Aside from playing in New York, Mike has played at several clubs and festivals throughout Europe and Africa. Over the last few years, Mike has had several opportunities to play with artists like Erykah Badu, Chris Cheek, Andra Day, Dayna Stephens, Julian Lage, Rich Perry, Natalie Cressman, and Michael Blume, amongst many others. He has one album out as a leader called " From Where You Are", a co-led album with Natalie Cressman called "Etchings in Amber", and is about to release a co-led album with pianist Christian Li. His latest endeavor in NYC has been subbing for the Tony Award winning musical, "Dear Evan Hansen" on Broadway. In addition to playing and recording, Mike is on faculty at The Calhoun School, Trevor Day School, and teaches private lessons around the city, and over Skype.

Erin Bentlage is an award-winning vocalist, composer, and arranger from Burlington, Vermont (USA), a graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production, and a current resident of Los Angeles, California. Coming from a background primarily rooted in jazz, she has had opportunities to contribute to a wide range of projects, from recording with Mozambican guitarist Albino Mbie (including a song which won the International Songwriting Competition), to performing as a soloist and with jazz vocal groups in festivals across the US, to singing and collaborating on projects of world-renowned musicians and composers as well as writing and performing her own music. As a composer and arranger, Erin harbors a deep love for harmony and musical exploration, and really finds her place arranging for the voice and everything that it can do. She has worked with and written for a cappella groups across the country, and for the past four years she has been a music director at A Cappella Academy (founded by Avi Kaplan and Ben Bram of Pentatonix), where she arranges and directs her own group of students in addition to teaching songwriting, music theory, and improvisation. She also arranges and writes for her own band, and has experience arranging for a wide range of other ensembles from big band to orchestra, always looking forward to opportunities for further exploration of those sounds. Since relocating to Los Angeles, Erin has been recording and performing as a vocalist with a diverse array of projects: the L.A. Choral Lab, a professional choir in Los Angeles; Snowfall, a pop Christmas caroling group; a quartet of vocalists based solely around improvisation; background vocals for The Voice, Justin Timberlake, and many other artists around LA; and she continues to perform and collaborate with musicians and composers both inside and outside of the jazz community. As a solo jazz-influenced artist, Erin has been performing with her own band and looks forward to recording an album of this music in the near future, as well as finding areas for creative collaboration wherever she can. In addition to her performing career, she continues to cultivate her passion for music education teaching at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music (founded by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and Los Angeles College of Music, as well as offering workshops on vocal improvisation, songwriting, and musicianship.

Saxophonist, composer, and educator Daniel Rotem fell in love with music at an early age andstarted playing tenor saxophone when he was 13. Now at age 27, Daniel is a graduate of BerkleeCollege of Music in Boston and the world-renowned Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performanceat UCLA. He has performed on four continents and has had the honor to share the stage withlegendary artists from Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dave Liebman, andBilly Childs, to Stevie Wonder, Usher, and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Daniel went on a U.S. State Department Tour to Morocco, and had the privilege of leading andnarrating a jazz history masterclass and performance hosted by the First Lady, Mrs. MichelleObama, as part of International Jazz Day in 2016. Daniel has performed at acclaimed festivalsincluding the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Playboy Jazz Festival, and the Red Sea Jazz Festival, and atfamed venues such as The Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, the Hollywood Bowl, TheMicrosoft Theater in LA, and many more. Daniel has taught at the Stanford Jazz Summer Camp and Jazz Institute, and is currently on facultyat the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), and teaches the LAUSD All-City JazzBand. His debut album “Be Nice” was released independently in February 2017.

Christian Li （李潭林） is a jazz pianist. He was born in Montreal, Quebec and raised in the small town of Horseheads, NY. He began performing at an early age, presenting extremely sloppy (if somewhat charmingly naïve) versions of less challenging classical works. At the impressionable age of 13, Christian began playing in his school’s jazz band, where he discovered a natural affinity for improvisation and started down the path that would shatter his parents’ hopes and dreams. Soon after, Christian received a full-tuition scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music. There, he studied and performed with a wide variety of artists including Danilo Perez, Ben Street, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, Chris Cheek, Rich Perry, Dayna Stephens, Donny McCaslin, Jack Dejohnette, and John Patitucci. Christian leads his own groups and works extensively as a sideman. He has performed at a few festivals, including Newport, Panama, Monterey, Montreux, Detroit, and Jazz En Comminges. He has also performed at a few notable venues, including the Blue Note, Birdland, East Shore, and Carnegie Hall. He has given a talk at TEDx Chemung Valley. He sometimes summons enough courage to perform classical music. He also arranges string for Norwegian singer-songwriter Siv Jakobsen. Christian is on faculty at the Berklee College of Music and the Calhoun School. He currently studies classical piano with Deirdre O’Donohue. He is a fan of Paul Bley, Miles Davis, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Aphex Twin, Charles Ives, and Johann Sebastian Bach, among others. When not playing piano, he can be spotted hobbling at the end of a long run, “studying” wine, or carrying too many books onto the subway.

Originally from Montreal, Rick Rosato moved to New York City in 2007 to study at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. He quickly became one of the most in-demand jazz bassists and has been maintaining an international performance schedule since. In 2010, he led a three-month-long artist series at the Upstairs Jazz Club in Montreal, where he formed several different groups featuring some of today’s most influential voices in jazz, including the co-led trio “Stranahan/Zaleski/Rosato”. In the summer of 2014, Rick competed for the TD Jazz Awards at the Montreal International Jazz Festival with his own trio and won the Galaxie Jazz Award for best composition. He is regularly touring internationally and recording with groups such as Gilad Hekselman, Joel Ross, Melissa Aldana, Stranahan/Zaleski/Rosato, Ben Van Gelder, David Kikoski, and Will Vinson. Rick has also performed with Billy Hart, Peter Bernstein, Mark Turner, Dayna Stephens, Chris Potter, Aaron Parks, Bill Stewart, Marcus Gilmore, Jeff Ballard, Ari Hoenig, Mike Moreno, Lage Lund, Charles Altura, and many more. In addition to private teaching, Rick has led workshops all over the world and was a featured artist and educator at the Thai International Jazz Conference in 2014. “It should be noted here that Rosato resembles no less a star of the bass viol as Charlie Haden for his lovely tone.” - Denver Jazz Music Examiner “He is definitely a bassist to listen for - a compelling soloist, a rock-solid foundation, and a blooming compositional voice.” - Porkpie Jazz “Rick Rosato is one of the most versatile and virtuosic bass players around. His time is impeccable and his solos captivating. Rick’s sense of form, melody and harmony are as apparent as his perfect technical execution.” - Ben van Gelder

Italian drummer Roberto Giaquinto started out his musical journey with his older brother in Naples, Italy, playing with different local bands around the city while still in middle school. Thanks to the support of his family he was able to keep developing his passion for music throughout high school. After he moved to Rome he graduated in jazz arranging at the conservatory Licino Refice. In 2009 he was awarded a scholarship for Berklee College of Music and after moving to Boston in 2010 he was selected to be part of the Global Jazz Institute, an intensive honorary program directed by Danilo Perez, and with Joe Lovano, George Garzone, Terri Lyne Carrington, John Patitucci, Dave Liebman, Adam Cruz and Ben Street. Since coming to the States Giaquinto has performed in many festival and clubs such as the Blue Note, Birdland, Kimmel Center, Detroit Jazz Festival, Panama Jazz Festival, Toronto Jazz Festival, Nancy Jazz Pulsation, Kennedy Center, Jazz en Comminges, Red Sea Jazz Festival, Bregen Jazz Fest among many others, with musicians such as George Garzone, Chris Cheek, Donny McCaslin, Aaron Parks, Dayna Stephens, Gilad Hekselman, Troy Roberts, Miguel-Atwood Ferguson, Jason Palmer, Steve Wilson and many more. He is currently based in New York City and he is involved in a lot of projects such as the Daniel Rotem Group, Mike Bono Trio, Adison Evans Quintet, Silvano Monasterios Group etc. With pianist Yakir Arbib he has formed the band Radio Intro, a duo of improvised music that also has recorded a very acclaimed album “Sketches on the Radio” live in Canada. Encouraged by his mentor Hal Crook, Giaquinto gave life to his own project in which he plays his original compositions. Also very passionate about education, besides teaching regularly in NYC and in masterclasses around the world, he is the founder and director of the In Motion Jazz Fest, a very progressive music workshop and concert series in Naples, Italy.