http://www.montereyjazzfestival.org/2011/artists/miles-davisgil-evans-still-ahead-orchestra-directed-vince-mendoza-featuring-terence-blanchar

Miles Evans was born in 1965 to Gil and Anita Evans. He was named after his father's musical partner, Miles Davis. As a teenager, he started playing his namesake’s instrument. He began playing professionally at 17. When Gil Evans passed away in 1988, Miles assumed leadership of the Gil Evans Orchestra. He has served as bandleader, arranger and lead trumpet player of the orchestra ever since. His credits include Gil Evans Orchestra, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones, Jaco Pastorius, and Sting.

Peter Erskine has played drums since the age of four and is known for his versatility and love of working in different musical contexts. He appears on over 500 albums and film scores, and has won two Grammy Awards plus an Honorary Doctorate. He’s played with Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Weather Report, Steps Ahead, Jaco Pastorius, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Diana Krall, Michael Brecker, The Yellowjackets, Pat Metheny & Gary Burton, to name just a few. He has additionally appeared as a soloist with the London Symphony, Los Angeles, BBC and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras. Peter graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy and studied percussion with George Gaber at Indiana University. He has won the Modern Drummer Magazine Readers' Poll in the Jazz Drummer category nine times, and is currently the Director of Drumset Studies at USC Thornton School of Music. His books are available from Alfred Publishing, including Time Awareness for All Musicians. His two most recent CDs are on the Fuzzy Music label: Standards with Alan Pasqua and Dave Carpenter, and Worth the Wait with Tim Hagans and the Norrbotten Big Band. Peter lives in Santa Monica, California.

Terence Blanchard has established himself as one of the most influential jazz musicians and film score masters of his generation, a member of a jazz legacy that has shaped the contours of modern jazz today.  With more than twenty-nine albums to his credit as a musician, Blanchard is a four-time Grammy Award winner and multiple nominee, including a 2008 win for his instrumental solo on “Be-Bop” on Live At The 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey Jazz Festival Records/Concord).As a film composer, Blanchard has more than fifty scores to his credit and was also nominated for a Golden Globe. 

Blanchard recently completed the score for Guy Moshe’s adventure thriller, Bunraku, starring Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson, Josh Hartnett and Ron Perlman, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. Blanchard’s music was also recently seen in Spike Lee/HBO’s If God’s Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the sequel to the critically-acclaimed 2006 film, When the Levees Broke. The film shows the current state of Blanchard’s native New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina, and follows the lives of several individuals and their families in the aftermath of one of the worst disasters to occur in U.S. history.  Blanchard won a Grammy for his 2007 CD A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina).

Blanchard is currently at work on an original production for Opera St. Louis, a project that he has been commissioned to create that will premiere in 2012; an orchestral piece that he has been commissioned to write for the Louisiana Philharmonic (“Concerto For Roger Dickerson”) that is slated to premiere February 2011 and scoring for the upcoming George Lucas/Anthony Hemingway feature film, Red Tails.

As Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which he was instrumental in relocating from Los Angeles to New Orleans, Blanchard works with students in the areas of artistic development, arranging, composition and concert programming.  He also participates in master classes around the world as well as local community outreach activities in his beloved hometown of New Orleans. 2011 will be Terence’s sixth performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He was the Festival's Artist-In-Residence in 2007.