JAZZ EDUCATION NETWORK
Each year, JEN is proud to recognize the efforts of hard-working students and educators, who are engaged in creating excellence and making an impact in jazz education. The following awards were presented at the 2023 JEN Conference in Dallas, Texas.
With a unique style and sound that echo the influences of his past, Brad Leali stands as one of the most notable saxophonists of current times. A native of Denver, Colorado, Leali was raised in the Baptist church, where gospel music formed the foundation of his musical identity. In addition to the spiritual sounds that shaped his early life, he spent countless hours listening to the music his parents loved—John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Parker, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Nancy Wilson. It is no wonder that, from a young age, he naturally combined gospel, jazz, and R&B into a distinctive and soulful musical voice.
While studying the saxophone, Leali spent his formative years immersed in Denver’s vibrant live jazz scene. One venue in particular—El Chapultepec, owned by Jerry Krantz—became a pivotal part of his musical upbringing. Krantz welcomed young musicians like Leali, giving them the chance to listen, learn, and eventually sit in. It was at “The Pec” that Leali first encountered many of his early mentors and local legends: Billy Tolles, Billy Wallace, Homer Brown, Nat Yarbrough, and others. He also had invaluable opportunities to hear and study with jazz greats such as Clark Terry, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, and Count Basie alumnus Frank Wess—experiences that deeply shaped his developing artistry.
Leali earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Education from North Texas State University in 1989, where he performed with the world-renowned One O’Clock Lab Band. Upon graduating, he was immediately recruited by the Harry Connick Jr. Orchestra, serving as lead alto saxophonist and musical director from 1989 to 1994. During this period, the orchestra toured internationally and recorded two acclaimed albums—When My Heart Finds Christmas and Red Light, Blue Light.
Leali entered the Count Basie Orchestra in 1995 at the invitation of Frank Foster and later continued with the band under Grover Mitchell, gaining invaluable experience from both legendary leaders. During his years as one of the top jazz musicians in New York City, Leali became a fixture in legendary venues such as the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Jazz Standard, Iridium, and Birdland. He also performed with jazz vocal legend Nancy Wilson and was a member of Benny Golson’s Big Band, further establishing himself as one of the most expressive and versatile saxophonists of his generation.
Leali’s desire to “pay it forward” and help sustain the legacy of jazz led him to earn a Master’s Degree from Rutgers University in 2005. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed Director of Jazz Studies at Texas Tech University, where several scholarships—including the Brad Leali Jazz Scholarship—were established in his honor. In 2008, he joined the esteemed University of North Texas faculty as Professor of Jazz Saxophone, where he continues to mentor and inspire the next generation of jazz artists.
Over the course of his teaching career, Leali has helped shape countless young musicians who have gone on to become top educators, touring and recording artists, arrangers, composers, and influential leaders across the music industry. His former students continue to inspire new generations through their achievements and contributions.
Leali is proudly endorsed by Conn-Selmer Saxophones and D’Addario Reeds, partnerships reflecting his commitment to exceptional sound, craftsmanship, and artistic integrity.
In addition to his extensive work as a featured soloist and collaborator, Leali leads his own quartet, quintet, and ten-piece Groove-tet. His smaller ensembles showcase his gospel-rooted soulfulness, rich improvisational voice, and expressive original writing. The Groove-tet—co-led with his wife, Carla Helmbrecht, on vocals—is known for its deep grooves, strong influences of swing and the blues, high energy, and tasty, thoughtful arrangements that consistently captivate and engage audiences. Together, these groups continue to bring Leali’s distinctive artistry to listeners across the United States and abroad.
Leali also enjoys a prominent role as a touring and recording member of Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, bringing his unmistakable sound to major concert halls, festivals, and broadcast appearances throughout the world. His dynamic presence, versatility, and stylistic range have made him a standout voice within the ensemble, further amplifying his reputation as one of today’s most expressive and engaging saxophonists.
Aaron W. Bush is the director of bands at Foxboro High School. As a teacher and conductor, Aaron directs the Foxboro High School Concert Band, Wind Ensemble, Marching Band, Jazz Ensemble, Jazz Lab Band, and teaches courses in Music Theory and Arts in Social Justice. Continuing a rich tradition of musical excellence, the Foxboro bands have received state, regional, and national recognition at festivals under Mr. Bush’s direction, including the Jazz Ensemble’s selection as an Essentially Ellington Festival & Competition finalist in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. In 2019, Mr. Bush led the Foxboro High School Jazz Ensemble on an international performance tour of Australia, including performances in Sydney and Perth.
Prior to joining the music staff in Foxboro, Aaron was the Director of Middle School Bands in Needham, Massachusetts. Under his direction, performing ensembles in Needham consistently received state, regional, and national recognition. His groups regularly performed as MICCA gold medal recipients at Boston Symphony Hall, and were frequently invited to perform at state and national festivals as premier concert hour ensembles. As a guest clinician, adjudicator, and conductor, Aaron is highly sought-after in the New England area. He has directed numerous jazz and wind ensembles across the greater New England area including the Northeast, Western, Southeast, and Eastern MMEA, New Hampshire and Connecticut All-State Jazz Bands, and Vermont District Jazz Ensembles. In addition to his work in Foxboro Public Schools, Aaron is the director of the Festival Jazz Ensemble for the South Shore Conservatory Summer Music Festival in Hingham, MA and serves as a faculty member at the Foxboro Jazz Improvisation Camp.
In 2014 and 2022, Aaron was named as a semi-finalist for the National GRAMMY Music Educator Award. In 2016, he was named as “One of the Nation’s Top 50 Educators Who Make A Difference” by School Band and Orchestra Magazine. Aaron received his undergraduate degree in Music Education and Saxophone Performance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his masters degree in Music Education from The Boston Conservatory. He currently serves as a member of both the MMEA Southeastern District and the MICCA Executive Board. His mentors include Stephen C. Massey, George Murphy, Ted Hagarty, Malcolm W. Rowell, jr., Daniel Lasdow, and Lynn E. Klock.
Standing on the shoulders of flute giants from worlds as diverse as Rampal & Galway in Classical Music; Richard Egues’ Cuban Charanga style; rocker Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull; Herbie Mann and – most influential of all – Hubert Laws as pioneers of Jazz Flute, Latin Grammy Award winning Nestor Torres’ rhythmic and mellifluous flute sound remains apart in a class all by itself. His 14 recordings as a soloist; 4 Latin Grammy nominations, one Grammy nomination and one Latin Grammy Award; collaborations with diverse artists such as Gloria Estefan, Kenny Loggins, Dave Mathews, Herbie Hancock, Tito Puente, Michael Camilo, Paquito D’ Rivera and Arturo Sandoval; as well as performances with the Cleveland, Singapore, and New World Symphony Orchestras among many others, are testament to the remarkable journey of an Artist who continues to grow and enrich the lives of those who experience his talents.
Born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, Nestor Torres moved to New York City, where he pursued Classical flute studies at Mannes School of Music, Jazz at Berklee College of Music and Classical and Jazz at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. During that time he also learned to improvise in the ‘Charanga’ Cuban Dance Music style, which helped shape and develop Nestor’s melodic and danceable sound.
His CD This Side Of Paradise won the Latin Grammy award in the Pop instrumental category, scheduled to be presented on September 11, 2001. This great achievement – and its timing – proved to be a major turning point for Torres.
Since then, Torres has focused on transcending his role as a Jazz Flautist to that of an agent of change through crossover multi-media productions, compositions and performances. To that effect, his compositions ‘Successors’, Marta y Maria and Disarmament Suite (commissioned by the Miami Children’s Chorus, St. Martha-Yamaha Concert Series, and ICAP – International Committee of Artists for Peace – respectively), are variations on Nestor Torres’ multi-cultural fusion sounds as expressions of today’s world. Then again, Nestor’s music has always been about that: a Crossover fusion of Latin, Classical, Jazz and Pop sounds. Rich and engaging, complex and exuberant, profound yet accessible. In addition to his achievements in the studio and on the stage, Torres is also the recipient of many awards, including two honorary doctorate degrees from Barry University and Carlos Albizu University, for his commitment to youth, education and cultural exchanges.
For more than six decades, NEA Jazz Master Hubert Laws has stood at the pinnacle of musical excellence, universally recognized as the premier flutist in jazz and one of the very few artists to make the flute his primary instrument. His mastery extends across genres — from jazz to classical, rhythm and blues to pop — making him one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his generation.
Born into a remarkably musical family in Houston, Texas, Laws discovered the flute in high school and quickly found his voice in jazz, performing with the local group that would later become the Crusaders. His prodigious talent earned him a classical scholarship to the Juilliard School, where he studied with the legendary Julius Baker by day and performed at night with jazz and Latin greats including Mongo Santamaria, Lloyd Price, and John Lewis.
Since 1964, Hubert Laws has released more than twenty powerful and expressive recordings as a leader. As a session musician, his flute can be heard on landmark works with Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Herbie Hancock, Sarah Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, and so many others. His artistry has graced film scores such as The Wiz and The Color Purple, and he has collaborated with Quincy Jones, Bob James, Claude Bolling, and Earl Klugh on projects that continue to inspire listeners around the world.
Laws’ classical career is equally extraordinary. He has performed as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and with the great orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Stanford. His sold-out Hollywood Bowl appearances — including his legendary duet concert with Jean-Pierre Rampal — remain defining moments of crossover brilliance.
He has been celebrated by DownBeat magazine for more than a decade as the world’s leading flutist, and in 2011, received the nation’s highest jazz honor: NEA Jazz Master.
Beyond the awards, performances, and recordings, Laws has always been an educator at heart — inspiring students, musicians, teachers, and audiences across generations. He embodies the JEN mission through a lifetime of mentorship, artistic excellence, and passion for the jazz art form.
For his immeasurable contributions to music and education, and for redefining what is possible on the flute, the Jazz Education Network proudly presents the 2026 LeJENd of Jazz Education Award to Hubert Laws.
Mark Ruffin was born in Chicago and spent the formative years surrounded by the music of his parents’ record store where as a young child he was exposed to the jazz legends of the time. In a special promo produced for Jazz Appreciation Month by the National Endowment for the Arts, Ruffin speaks of being 5 years old when his mom was robbed in their record store while Miles Davis continued to play in the background on the record player. Ruffin states that as long as he heard Miles on the box, he felt protected, and he later states that the famed trumpeter became his patron saint from that moment. The sounds of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Motown and Black popular music of the 60’s were the soundtrack of his childhood and he knew from an early age that this was the world he wanted to be a part of. It was a time of immense growth and learning, and it solidified his passion for sharing the stories and sounds of this incredible art form.
While attending SIU, a broadcasting mecca, Ruffin took advantage of the resources at SIU. He was one of the very few Black students to have an FCC 3rd Class License and host a music shift on WSIU. How that happened is quite the story, but it landed him on the student station WIDB for two years. He was also editor of the Black student newspaper, Uhuru-Sasa, for two years. During this time, he worked part-time for Plaza Records for nearly all three years he was in Carbondale.
Always ahead of the curve, Ruffin is a pioneer in jazz broadcasting and worked at the first station to coin the term “Smooth Jazz” in the 80’s. With an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz history, he immersed himself in jazz culture as a curator, tastemaker, host, journalist and producer.
For more than 25 years, from 1980 to 2007, Ruffin was a fixture on Chicago’s jazz scene, not just as a broadcaster on several well-known stations but also as the jazz editor to Chicago Magazine with over 600 articles under his belt. During this time he’s had the privilege of interviewing countless legends and shining a light on the city’s homegrown talent. Ruffin went on to produce two syndicated shows distributed to over 120 stations in the U.S. and Canada, and also produced nationally syndicated shows for legendary talent such as Ramsey Lewis, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King and others. Additionally, as a Cultural Correspondent for the Chicago PBS television station, his pieces on Jazz and American culture presented on the television shows Artbeat Chicago and Chicago Tonight garnered him 2 Emmy awards.
The microphone has always been his favorite instrument; a tool for connection and a bridge between artists and the listeners. This belief has inspired his current work as Program Director and Announcer for SiriusXM since 2007 to present, where he curates a sonic journey for over 1.5 million people in North America by setting the lineups for three jazz stations and hosts daily broadcasts on-air for the Real Jazz channel.
While the airwaves are his home, his work has taken him into other creative ventures. Ruffin has produced over 14 albums for some of the most gifted artists in the industry and was nominated for a Grammy for his work producing Rene Marie’s album I Wanna Be Evil: With Love to Eartha Kitt. He also had the opportunity to put his love of history and storytelling to paper in his book Bebop Fairy Tales: An Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance and Baseball, which received two “Feathered Quill” book award recognitions. Lastly, Ruffin was recognized with the Jazz Journalist Association’s Career Excellence Award in Broadcasting and the Duke DuBois Humanitarian Award from JazzWeek.com.
In addition, for the last 4 years, Ruffin has been a juror for the esteemed Peabody Awards, where he takes great pride in helping to curate the list of awardees that have created the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in all of television, radio, and digital media.
With nearly a dozen active projects in his pipeline, Ruffin shows no signs of slowing down his contributions to the jazz music he loves, despite closing in on 50 years in the industry. He sees jazz as a living organism that takes on the culture of the many different countries where it has traveled to and evolved. Ruffin will continue elevating, memorializing, creating, promoting and serving jazz worldwide.
Currently Professor for Artistic Research at the Jam Music Lab Private University in Vienna, Dr. Monika Herzig is the author of “David Baker – A Legacy in Music” (IU Press), Experiencing Chick Corea: A Listener’s Companion (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), and co-editor of Jazz and Gender (Routledge, 2022). She is also the chair of the research committee for the Jazz Education Network (JEN) and on the editorial committee of JAZZ (Jazz Education in Research and Practice, IU Press).
As a jazz pianist she has toured the world, opened for acts such as Power of Tower, Sting, Yes and her music has won DownBeat Magazine Awards and was featured on NPR and JazzWeek. Her all-female Supergroup Sheroes was voted as one of the best groups of 2018 by DownBeat Magazine and her composition “Just Another Day at the Office” is one of the selections in New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Female Composers (Berklee Press, 2022). Herzig’s awards include a 1994 DownBeat Magazine Award for Best Original Song, a Jazz Journalist Association Hero 2015 award, as well as grants from the NEA, the Indiana Arts Commission, MEIEA, Jazz Tours, MidAtlantic Arts, the US Embassy among others. Monika is a CASIO Artist.
Swiss/Dutch saxophonist Charlotte Lang was born in 1996 in Basel and studied the bachelor and master program at the JAZZCAMPUS Basel under the guidance of Domenic Landolf and Daniel Blanc. She is currently studying the Master of Music in Global Jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston under the artistic direction of Danilo Pérez. In addition she is part of Terri Lyne Carrington’s Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
From 2015 to 2018, Charlotte she was a member of the Swiss National Youth Jazz Orchestra under the direction of Christian Muthspiel. Since 2020, she became a member of the German National Youth Jazz Orchestra (Bundesjazzorchester Deutschland), under the direction of Niels Klein and Ansgar Striepens. She also plays is the Austrian FJO (Frauen Jazz Orchester→Women Jazz Orchestra of Austria).
In 2021, Charlotte founded her own Quintet the „Charlotte Lang Group“, for what she is composing, arranging and booking. In the fall 2023, her first album will be recorded and hopefully released by a renowned label.
Charlotte plays in the “Swiss Jazz Orchestra” and the “Zurich Jazz Orchestra”, the two professional Big Bands of Switzerland.
Charlotte recently got the unique opportunity to write a monthly blog for the Swiss Jazz & Blues Magazine called JAZZTIME, to tell readers about her time at abroad and specifically her time at Berklee. Her graduate program lasts only until the summer of 2023. She hopes to stay in the United States to enlarge her network and build her musical career.
