“If Scott Amendola didn't exist, the San Francisco music scene would have to invent him.” Derk Richardson, San Francisco Bay Guardian. For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. An ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists, Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinists Regina Carter and Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who have each forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz.

Todd Sickafoose is a Tony and Grammy award-winning composer, producer, orchestrator, bandleader and double bassist. He produced and co-arranged all three albums of the Broadway hit Hadestown and also produced Anaïs Mitchell’s album Young Man in America. Since 2004, Sickafoose has recorded and performed internationally with artist/activist Ani DiFranco. Straddling the worlds of folk, indie rock, jazz and chamber music, his own band Tiny Resistors has performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival, Stern Grove Festival, Angel City Jazz Festival and been featured on many “Best-Of” lists including The Village Voice and JazzTimes. Writing for Tiny Resistors, Sickafoose created Bear Proof, a long-form chamber jazz hybrid commissioned by the Doris Duke Foundation. Sickafoose and Tiny Resistors performed Bear Proof at The Shedd in the fall of 2019.

Clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg grew up in Denver. He was a pupil of the eminent clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo and studied with Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano. Since 1992, when his group New Klezmer Trio "kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music" (San Francisco Chronicle), Ben has shaped a career through curiosity and experimentation. The New York Times says Ben’s music “conveys a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising.” Downbeat Magazine has twice named him Rising Star Clarinetist.