“A powerful, passionate player,” writes Bill Milkowski of JazzTimes. “One of modern jazz’s foremost saxophonists,” writes Ross Boissoneau of Jazziz Magazine. Wayne Escoffery is co-leader of the Mingus Big Band, a professor at Yale, and founder of the Black Art Jazz Collective. A Grammy Award winner and two-time DownBeat Critics Poll winner on tenor and soprano saxophone, Escoffery was born in London and raised in New Haven, where he began his formal music studies. He went on to study with saxophone legend Jackie McLean and earn a master’s degree at the New England Conservatory’s Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Escoffery spent more than a decade touring and recording with Tom Harrell and has performed with many of jazz’s leading artists. His acclaimed album Alone, featuring Gerald Clayton, Ron Carter, and Carl Allen, reflects on love, loss, and solitude; The Times named it one of the year’s best albums.