September 5, 2002 Millennium Stage

Keyboardist/vocalist Bill Heid, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, now living in Bethesda, Maryland, has performed throughout the Unites States, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Singapore. He has led his own groups as well as played with such jazz artists as Jimmy Ponder, Bruce Foreman, Grant Green, Sonny Stitt, and David "Fathead" Newman, and with blues artists including Son Seals, Jimmy Witherspoon, John Lee Hooker, Fenton Robinson, Ko Ko Taylor, and Roy Buchanan. In Detroit in the late 1980s through the 1990s, Heid performed and recorded with blues legends Johnnie Basset, Joe Weaver, and Alberta Adams. Heid has appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival, and his blues and jazz piano and Hammond Organ keyboard work has been heard on European and American television programs including NBC's Dateline. His recordings are on the Muse/Westside, Black Magic, Fedora, and Savant labels.

Bassist and bass guitarist Patrick O'Leary, born in Buffalo, New York, and now living in Elmhurst, New York, studied piano and bass at Potsdam State University's Crane School of Music, where he received a bachelor's degree. He has toured the U.S. with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, the Illinois Jacquet Orchestra, the Hal Galper Trio, and Teri Thornton. He also toured the world with Hampton, including a 1986 State Department tour of South America, and recorded such CDs as the Grammy-nominated Sentimental Journey with the vibraphonist. Other leading artists with whom O'Leary has played include saxophonists Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, and James Moody, pianist Marian McPartland, trombonist and conch shell artist Steve Turré, vocalists Joe Williams and Marlena Shaw, and vocalist/pianist Diana Krall. He is regularly heard at jazz festivals throughout the world. As a Kennedy Center/Department of State Jazz Ambassador, O'Leary toured several African countries with the Jubilee Jazz Trio (which included Scott Robinson and Larry Ham), May-July 2001. In October, after returning from his tour with the Bill Heid Trio, O'Leary will join the Bob Dorough Trio, for its Kennedy Center/Department of State Jazz Ambassadors tour of the Caribbean, Central and South America.

Drummer Michael Petrosino, a native of Auburn, New York now living in Brooklyn, began his professional career at the age of eighteen, playing gigs in the Toledo, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan metropolitan areas. He moved on to perform on cruise ships plying the world's oceans, backing such entertainers as The Fifth Dimension, Lou Rawls, Ben Vereen, The Temptations, and Gladys Knight. Returning to dry land, he landed in Cleveland, Ohio, where he played with local artists and touring artists such as Jeannie Bryson Rick Margitza, and Gerri Allen. Since moving to New York, Petrosino has become a fixture in the city's jazz clubs, including Visiones, Birdland, The Blue Note and others. He has led his own groups at The 5 Spot, Kavehaus, The @ Café, SMF, and Auggie's, and the Mike Petrosino Trio appears every Tuesday at Dizzy's in Brooklyn, featuring guest artists suchas Bruce Barth, Xavier Davis, Joe Barbato, and Randy Johnson, to name a few.

September 20, 2002: Millennium Stage

Drummer Lenny Robinson, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a current resident of Columbia, Maryland, studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Morgan State University, both in Baltimore, Maryland. He toured Europe, including the Montreux, North Sea, and Oslo jazz festivals with the Pamoja Experience, a group chronicling the evolution of jazz. During his four-year military service he was a member of the 26th Army Band of New York, and rose to percussion section leader. He has also toured with R&B artist Jean Carne, progressive jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, and was a member of Vanessa Rubin's European touring band in 1994. Robinson was a member of the Bill Cosby "You Bet Your Life" TV show band directed by keyboardist Shirley Scott (1991). He has also appeared at the New York's Village Vanguard with Lou Donaldson, with whom he also toured Europe and the U.S. In Washington, D.C., he performed with Roy Hargrove, Betty Carter, and Wynton Marsalis, and is a member of Marsalis' "How To Listen To Jazz" program, introducing inner-city children to jazz.

Saxophonist Marshall Keys, native to and a current resident of Washington D.C., has appeared at the East Coast Jazz Festival in Rockville, Maryland, the 1999 Norway Jazz Festival and Cruise, the 1983 Kool Jazz Festival, the DC Jazz Festival, and in jazz festivals in St. Croix, St. Lucia, Acapulco (Mexico), Mainz (Germany), and in Holland. A regular touring partner of the great blues organist Jimmy McGriff since 1984, Keys has also played with Jimmy Witherspoon, Clark Terry, Hank Jones, Jimmy Heath, Frank Wess, Buck Hill, and Keter Betts. He was a featured soloist with the Branford Marsalis Quintet in the 1986 Tribute to Jazz Master Thelonius Monk at the Kennedy Center, and also took part in the Kennedy Center's Tribute to Lionel Hampton. He also appeared with his Quartet as part of Miriam Makeba's 1981 performance at the Kennedy Center. A dedicated teacher, Keys gives mentoring classes throughout the metropolitan area to aspiring young performers.

Organist Harry Appelman, a native of Downers Grove, Illinois, now living in Silver Spring, Maryland, is a graduate of the University of Illinois with a master's degree in music from the New England Conservatory of Music. He performs frequently with nationally known headliners in Washington, D.C. metropolitan area jazz venues such as Blues Alley, One Step Down, The Willard Hotel, Wolf Trap, and The Kennedy Center. He also leads his own jazz piano and organ trios. He toured the U.S. and Canada with the Woody Herman and Artie Shaw Orchestras, and played in New York with Dakota Station and numerous other artists at such clubs as The Village Gate, Birdland, and Visiones. Appelman also passes on his expertise by teaching privately in the Washington metropolitan area.

September 26, 2002 Millennium Stage

October 3, 2002 Millennium Stage

Guitarist Chris Bergson, a native New Yorker, works as a blues and jazz guitarist throughout the city, where he is also known as an innovative composer. Bergson, who has headlined at the Fat Cat Jazz Club with bassist Doug Weiss and Drummer Al Foster, has also performed as a leader and sideman at many of New York's other top venues including Birdland, the 55 Bar, the Jazz Standard, Joe's Pub, Small's, Smoke, and Terra Blues. In Philadelphia he has appeared at Chris' Jazz Café ad Ortleib's Jazzhaus. Bergson has worked with such artists as Joel Frahm, Dena DeRose, Dennis Irwin, Norah Jones, Joe Magnarelli, Wynton Marsalis, Annie Ross, John Webber, and Grant Stewart. He is prominently featured on Ross's CD Cool for Kids (Juniper Records) and recorded the CD Reunion of Souls with bassist Ashley Turner and fellow Jazz Ambassadors, guitarist Sheryl Bailey and drummer Sunny Jain. His CDs as a leader are Wait for Spring and Blues for Some Friends of Mine(both on the Juniper label).

Drummer Sunny Jain, a native of Rochester, New York, now living and working in New York City, has been influenced from childhood by the music of India, and the native tablas (drums). A trained musician from his youth, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Music degree in jazz performance from Rutgers University and a Master of Arts from New York University. Jain has performed with many great musicians including Eric Alexander, Kenny Barron, Ralph Bowen, Ray Drummond, Ted Dunbar, Earl May, Ugonna Okegwo, Larry Ridley and Buster Williams. In New York, Jain has appeared at the Blue Note, Birdland, and The Jazz Standard, as well as in various festivals and clubs in Canada, Europe, and Japan. He is leader of the Sunny Jain Collective, which fuses jazz with Indian music. Jain and his colleagues have just released their debut album on NCM East Records.

Organist Kyle Koehler, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, now based in Brooklyn, New York, is a graduate of the jazz performance program of William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. He studied with Rufus Reid, Harold Mabern, and many others. He has performed with leading jazz and blues artists including Bobby Watson, Steve Turré, Eric Alexander, Donald Harrison, Bootsie Barnes, Peter Bernstein, Mark Whitfield and Robin Eubanks. His numerous festival appearances include the East Coast, Mellon, and Cape May jazz festivals. His club dates include performances at Zanzibar Blue and Smoke (New York City), Blues Alley (Washington, D.C.), and The Blue Room (Kansas City).

Bob Dorough Trio
Bob Dorough, Steve Berger, and Patrick O'Leary

October 7, 2002 Millennium Stage

Keyboardist-vocalist and trio leader Bob Dorough was born in Cherry Hill, Arkansas in December 1923. His formal education was interrupted by a nearly three-year stint in the U.S. Army (Feb. 1943 - Dec. 1945), during which he served in a Special Services Band, entertaining troops as a singer at bases across the United States. He returned to North Texas state Teacher's College (now University of North Texas), where BeBop was the reigning music, studied composition, received a bachelor's degree in music, and went on to do graduate work at New York's Columbia University. He served as musical director for the Sugar Ray Robinson Shows in the U.S., Canada, and France, with boxer Robinson performing as a tap dancer and Dorough appearing as the pianist and bandleader. After Robinson returned to the ring, Dorough remained in Paris, performing as a singing pianist at the Mars Club. Since then, his wide-ranging career has taken him through Los Angeles, St. Louis, commercial work on the East Coast, a stint as the composer, director and performer of recorded music for ABC-TV's Schoolhouse Rock, numerous jazz festivals, and club dates throughout the United States and Europe as well as Mexico and South Africa where he was a featured artist at the 2000 Davidoff International Vocal Jazz festival in Cape Town. A frequent winner of Down Beat Magazine's "Favorite Male Singer" poll, Dorough records for the Blue Note Label.

Guitarist Steve Berger, born in Orange, New Jersey, attended both the City College of New York and New York University, and studied with Barry Harris and Tal Farlow, among others. He has worked as an accompanist, sideman and leader in New York for two decades, appearing at the Blue Note and other clubs with such groups and artists as the Buck Clayton Band, David Allyn, The Ink Spots, and Vince Giordano's Nighthawks. He has performed and toured as member of the Bob Dorough Trio for the past seven years. Berger was house bandleader for 16 years at Arturo's in Greenwich Village.

Bassist and bass guitarist Patrick O'Leary, born in Buffalo, New York, and now living in Elmhurst, New York, studied piano and bass at Potsdam State University's Crane School of Music, where he received a bachelor's degree. He has toured the U.S. with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, the Illinois Jacquet Orchestra, the Hal Galper Trio, and Teri Thornton. He also toured the world with Hampton, including a 1986 State Department tour of South America, and recorded such CDs as the Grammy-nominated Sentimental Journey with the vibraphonist. Other leading artists with whom O'Leary has played include saxophonists Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, and James Moody, pianist Marian McPartland, trombonist and conch shell artist Steve Turré, vocalists Joe Williams and Marlena Shaw, and vocalist/pianist Diana Krall. He is regularly heard at jazz festivals throughout the world. As a Kennedy Center/Department of State Jazz Ambassador from May-July 2001, O'Leary toured several African countries with Scott Robinson and Larry Ham (The Jubliee Jazz Trio). In September 2002, O'Leary will tour East Asia as a Kennedy Center/Department of State Jazz Ambassador with the Bill Heid Trio.