Jazz Studies Group Coordinator for the Jazz Generations Initiative and the Program Coordinator for the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Passionate about supporting artistic and scholarly work in jazz, she plays a key role in developing programs, connecting communities, and fostering opportunities for musicians, researchers, and students. In her positions, she supports innovative programs, facilitates research and artistic collaboration, and helps advance the study and preservation of jazz culture. Yulanda brings commitment to community engagement and program development, contributing to the growth of both emerging scholars and seasoned practitioners within the jazz community.

Writer, editor, organizer and educator working at the intersection of music, politics and community history. The first person to have served as both politics columnist and music critic for the New York Times, Gio is currently writing a book about Gil Scott-Heron and Washington, D.C., under contract to Metropolitan Books/Macmillan and Faber & Faber. Since 2010, Gio has served as co-founder and editor-in-chief of capitalbop.com, a web magazine covering D.C.’s jazz scene. He was a 2024 DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities fellow and a 2021 Logan Nonfiction Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

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Composer and pianist Courtney Bryan is the New Orleans Co-P.I. of the Jazz Generations Initiative. Dr. Bryan is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, and she is a Steinway Artist and 2023 MacArthur Fellow. Recent accolades include the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2018), Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition (2019–2020), United States Artists Fellowship (2020), and the Camargo Foundation Fellowship (2025). She currently serves as composer-in-residence with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.

Yulanda C. McKenzie is the Jazz Studies Group Coordinator for the Jazz Generations Initiative and the Program Coordinator for the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Passionate about supporting artistic and scholarly work in jazz, she plays a key role in developing programs, connecting communities, and fostering opportunities for musicians, researchers, and students. In her positions, she supports innovative programs, facilitates research and artistic collaboration, and helps advance the study and preservation of jazz culture. Yulanda brings commitment to community engagement and program development, contributing to the growth of both emerging scholars and seasoned practitioners within the jazz community.

Giovanni Russonello is a writer, editor, organizer and educator working at the intersection of music, politics and community history. The first person to have served as both politics columnist and music critic for the New York Times, Gio is currently writing a book about Gil Scott-Heron and Washington, D.C., under contract to Metropolitan Books/Macmillan and Faber & Faber. Since 2010, Gio has served as co-founder and editor-in-chief of capitalbop.com, a web magazine covering D.C.’s jazz scene. He was a 2024 DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities fellow and a 2021 Logan Nonfiction Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn.

Educator, musician, and interdisciplinary artist from Houston, who has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2002. She is the Creative Director for Bamboula: Jazz Studies in Motion, the New Orleans arm of the Jazz Generations Initiative Project. Frazier recently curated programming for Prospect NOLA and was a 2023-2024 MLK Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests currently include the Gulf South and the Anthropocene, sound studies and the natural, and built environments of the Gulf South and Circum-Caribbean. She is the co-founder of Les Cenelles, a string and technological interfacing ensemble that performs African Diasporic music through a prismatic lens that honors African and Indigenous ancestors and chronicles ecological realities. As a company member of Goat in the Road Productions, Frazier has used her skills as an actor and as a musical composer in immersive performances and collaborations that tell lesser known stories. She is the proud parent of one son.