All of our faculty members will be alumni of
The Juilliard School or other top-tier jazz programs,
with special expertise and experience in jazz instruction.
Riley Mulherkar, Trumpet, Artistic Director
Riley Mulherkar has been recognized as a “smart young trumpet player” by The New York Times, praised by The Wall Street Journal as a “youngster to keep an eye on,” and is a 2020 recipient of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award for his work as “an original bandleader, composer, arranger, educator, community activist and advocate for jazz and the arts.”
Riley works with a number of leading artists of our time, including Wynton Marsalis, Anna Deavere Smith, and Alan Cumming, and is a founding member of The Westerlies, a new music brass quartet that creates the rarest of hybrids: music that is both “folk-like and composerly, lovely and intellectually rigorous” (NPR Music). Riley also serves as Artistic Director at Joye in Aiken, bringing leading young talent to the historic city of Aiken, South Carolina.
Born and raised in Seattle, Riley moved to New York in 2010 to study at The Juilliard School, where he completed his Bachelor’s Degree in 2014 and his Master’s in 2015. Riley is actively engaged in educational initiatives, founding the Joye in Aiken Jazz Camp in 2021, directing the Summer Advanced Institute at Seattle JazzEd from 2017-2019, and serving as an ambassador for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s “Jazz for Young People” program in New York and St. Louis from 2016 – 2018. Riley is also a faculty member of The College of Performing Arts at The New School in New York, NY. Riley is an Edwards Artist and performs on Edwards trumpets.
Jade Elliott, Saxophone
Born and raised in Southern California, alto saxophonist Jade Elliott moved to New York in 2020 to pursue her Master’s degree in Music Therapy at New York University, Steinhardt while immersing herself in the jazz scene of New York City. Since living in New York she has played with multiple groups around Manhattan and Brooklyn, including the Diva Jazz Orchestra, Sammy Miller and The Congregation, Bobby Sanabria's Multiverse Big Band, and The Grace Fox Big Band.
Before moving to New York, Jade got her Bachelor’s degree in Ethnomusicology from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, primarily playing and teaching around the greater Los Angeles area. In California, she has performed with artists including David Garfield, Kenny Burrell, Tito Puente, Jr., and Johnny Polanco’s Latin Jazz Orchestra, Emil Richards, and Matt Harris. She even traveled with Quincy Jones and his production team to Montreux, Switzerland in 2018 to perform for his 85th birthday celebration, which featured artists such as Monty Alexander, Jorja Smith, Robert Glasper, and Jacob Collier.
Jade is dedicated to jazz education, offering private lessons to students and adults of all ages, and is committed to utilizing her music therapy training to serve disenfranchised communities and minority groups. Currently, she sees clients at the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy, an internationally known private clinic at NYU, where she works with children and adults with special needs.