Drummer Sylvia Cuenca leads trumpeter Wallace Roney Jr., saxophonist Rico Jones, pianist Dave Kikoski, bassist Essiet Okon Essiet and percussionist Will Martins in a program that lives up to its name, bridging generations of jazz tradition with the energy of today’s most dynamic voices.
Cuenca’s own career is itself a bridge across eras. For four years she shared the bandstand with saxophone legend Joe Henderson, touring Europe extensively with his quartet. For seventeen years she performed with trumpet legend Clark Terry at the Village Vanguard, Birdland, the Blue Note and on jazz cruises around the world, playing alongside guest artists including Marian McPartland, Dianne Reeves and Lou Donaldson. She was a semi-finalist in the 1992 Thelonious Monk International Drum Competition and received jazz performance grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 and 1991.
Her list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of the music: Kenny Barron, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, Vincent Herring, Gregory Porter, Catherine Russell and Ernestine Anderson among many others. A longtime faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and NJPAC’s Jazz for Teens program, Cuenca received SJZ Jazz Aid Fund awards in both 2022 and 2026. Together with her bandmates, she brings the full sweep of that experience and the promise of what comes next to the Summer Fest stage.
Cuenca’s own career is itself a bridge across eras. For four years she shared the bandstand with saxophone legend Joe Henderson, touring Europe extensively with his quartet. For seventeen years she performed with trumpet legend Clark Terry at the Village Vanguard, Birdland, the Blue Note and on jazz cruises around the world, playing alongside guest artists including Marian McPartland, Dianne Reeves and Lou Donaldson. She was a semi-finalist in the 1992 Thelonious Monk International Drum Competition and received jazz performance grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988 and 1991.
Her list of collaborators reads like a who’s who of the music: Kenny Barron, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, Vincent Herring, Gregory Porter, Catherine Russell and Ernestine Anderson among many others. A longtime faculty member at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and NJPAC’s Jazz for Teens program, Cuenca received SJZ Jazz Aid Fund awards in both 2022 and 2026. Together with her bandmates, she brings the full sweep of that experience and the promise of what comes next to the Summer Fest stage.
