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Audrey Morrison
is director of jazz studies and
jazz trombone faculty at the Music Institute of
Chicago. A performer and educator in both
classical and jazz styles, she received her bach-
elor’s and master’s degrees from the Eastman
School of Music. Morrison has been a mem-
ber of the big bands of Clark Terry and Barrett
Deems, the DIVA big band in New York City,
and the Chicago Jazz Ensemble. She also plays
with the jazz sextet SHE, Bradley Williams’s st
Century Revue, the Lake Forest Symphony, Ars
Viva, and the Music Institute of Chicago Jazz
All-Stars. She is on the faculties of Columbia
College and North Park University. In the sum-
mer she teaches and performs at the Birch Creek
Music Center in Door County, WI. Morrison is
a frequent jazz festival clinician and adjudicator.
Bethany Pickens
is an award-winning pianist
and composer, having trained under the watch-
ful tutelage of her father, Willie Pickens. Since
graduating from the American Conservatory of
Music, she has performed, recorded, and con-
ducted clinics with such artists as Clark Terry,
Louis Bellson, Bobby Watson, Von Freeman,
Dee Dee Bridgewater, Roy Hargrove and Bran-
ford Marsalis, Rascal Flatts, Josh Groban, Are-
tha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Usher. Bethany
has also played duo concerts with her father at
Symphony Center, Ravinia, and
e Steinway
Society, as well as on NPR’s
Jazz Piano
Christmas Series at the Kennedy Center. Pick-
ens has taught in Chicago Public Schools for
over years and currently is the piano instruc-
tor at Kenwood Academy High School. Addi-
tionally, she has been an artist-in-residence with
the Jazz Institute of Chicago and the CPS All-
City Elementary Jazz Ensemble, has adjudicated
the CPS City-Wide Jazz Festival, and has been
an instructor for the Ravinia Jazz Scholars.
Pharez Whitted
has performed throughout the
United States and overseas, including gigs at
the
Presidential Inauguration,
e Arsenio
Hall Show
, the
Billboard Music Awards,
Carne-
gie Hall and the MoTown Music Showcase. He
has performed with such notable jazz giants
and popular musicians as Wynton Marsalis,
Branford Marsalis, George Duke, Kirk Whalum,
Elvin Jones, Slide Hampton, John Mellencamp,
e Temptations, Roy Meriwether,
e O’Jays,
Lou Rawls, Ramsey Lewis, and former
Tonight
Show
bassist and classmate Bob Hurst. Whit-
ted’s most recent recordings,
Transient Journey
and
For the People
, were critically acclaimed and
successful with jazz listeners. He directs the jazz
program at Chicago State University.
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