Program

RJAM students and faculty will perform original compositions and arrangements of Jazz Standards which will be announced from stage. There is no intermission, but a quick changeover between the two ensembles.

Artist Profiles

Gina Benalcazar-Lopez, RJAM trombone

Ginita is an Ecuadorian-Honduran-American composer and trombonist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her specializations are in Latin-Jazz, Salsa, Swing, Cumbia, and chamber music, but Ginita plays and writes in various styles and shapes of ensemble depending where the music calls. She spends time in NYC/Brooklyn and on the West coast teaching at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music as a Visiting Professor.

She has performed with some of the world's most prolific band leaders and can be found playing with The Sinfonietta, The Roy Hargrove Big Band, Lulada Club, Etienne Charles’ Creole Soul, The Rufus Reid Big Band, The Dee Dee Bridgewater Big Band, Ulysses Owens Jr’s New Century Big Band, Helen Sung’s Big Band, Ted Nash’s Big Band, and made her Broadway debut in Huey Lewis’ “The Heart of Rock and Roll.”

Ginita’s discography is expansive, credited her as both soloist and arranger/composer as a side-person.

Ginita is also the engine of “La Orquesta Esa” and was awarded the Performance Plus Grant through Chamber Music America to record the project with the 10-piece format. At the pen of Ginita, this band ranges in different sizes and shapes dependant on the event, but their core book is comprised of original music by Ginita, as well as her arrangements by influences like Tito Puente, Willie Colon, Titi Amadeo, Celia Cruz, Eddie Palmieri, La Sonora Ponceña, and La Lupe.

She also has a Salsa Songbook, which powers the all-women Salsa band, Lulada Club and has also contributed music to Jazz at Lincoln Center, Adriana Vergara, Las Mariquitas, The Roy Hargrove Big Band, The Michael Dease Big Band, and The Gregg Hill Big Band. She’s currently working on a new program to feature a special artist and her music in Detroit.

Her signature sound being joyful and dramatic, LOE draws inspiration from dancers and has a mission to make their audience move. Since its inception, Ginita continues to incorporate new material into every one of her shows and has been known to incorporate into her songbook by popular request via her Instagram stories.

Making their debut on The Dizzy’s Club stage, Ginita y La Orquesta Esa has continued to frequent Lincoln Center stages. Her new album “LIVE at The Jazz Gallery” will be released in 2026.

Anthony Wilson, RJAM guitar

Born in Los Angeles in 1968, guitarist and composer Anthony Wilson is known for a body of work that moves fluidly across genres. 

The son of legendary jazz trumpeter and bandleader Gerald Wilson, his musical lineage has deeply influenced his creative trajectory, compositional choices, instrumental groupings, and the wide-ranging discography that blooms out of them. 

His first album — Anthony Wilson (1997) — featured a nine-piece “little big band” and received a Grammy nomination for Best Large Ensemble Jazz Recording. It was followed by Goat Hill Junket (1998), and Adult Themes (2000). His fourth recording with the nonet, Power of Nine (2006), was recognized as one of the top ten jazz albums of the year by the New Yorker.  Wilson’s acclaimed trio albums Our Gang (2001), Savivity (2005), and Jack of Hearts (2009) reimagine and reframe the Hammond organ-based genre of post-bop, soul-inflected jazz. In 2011, Wilson released Seasons, a live record and short film documenting the compositional process and premiere performance of his extended song cycle of the same name, written for and performed on a quartet of luthier John Monteleone’s handcrafted guitars called “The Four Seasons.”  That same year, Wilson released Campo Belo, a collection of original instrumental songs recorded in São Paulo, Brazil.

Traveling into, through, and beyond genres, Frogtown (2016) marked a turning point for Wilson as a composer and his debut as a songwriter and singer. Renowned producer Mike Elizondo teamed with him to realize this collection of layered, intimate musical stories and portraits. Songs and Photographs (2019), in which his distilled, personal musical compositions enter into a dialogue with his 35mm photography.

The work develops from two intertwined paths, one sonic and one visual, that increasingly play complementary roles in Wilson's creative process.
An inventive soloist and sensitive accompanist, he has been a core member of Diana Krall’s quartet since 2001, after joining her for a series of concerts in Paris at the Olympia Theater, which became the Grammy award winning recording and concert film Live in Paris (2002). 
Over the past two decades, Wilson has joined a diverse roster of jazz masters on their recordings and performances, including Charles Lloyd, Ron Carter, Mose Allison, Bobby Hutcherson, Madeleine Peyroux, Joe Sample, Al Jarreau, and Harold Land. And while his footing is firmly rooted in the jazz idiom, Wilson pivots with ease into other genres, having contributed his instrumental texture, improvisational authority, and orchestration to albums by pop music legends Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, Aaron Neville, and Barbra Streisand.

Wilson was awarded the Thelonious Monk Institute International Composers’ Award in 1995. He has also received commissions from Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the International Association of Jazz Education, the Henry Mancini Institute, and the Jazz Coalition Commission Fund. In 2018, he was selected as a MacDowell Fellow.