Kenny Banks, Jr., piano

Friday, November 13 · 7:00 PM

Known for his “deeply embodied gospel and soul roots,” Kenny’s “arrangements are thrilling, modern, and surprising.”

– Downbeat Magazine

Atlanta resident Kenny Banks Jr., has earned a reputation as one of the most dynamic jazz artists in the Southeast. Noted for his distinctive technique of blending jazz and gospel styles, Banks’s repertoire also includes flavors of Afro-Cuban and hip-hop sounds gathered from performing and recording around the world with a variety of artists.

A brilliant solo artist, Banks is also a regular on tour with vocalist Kurt Elling and vibraphonist Stefon Harris. He began playing the piano at age seven, and in his training with his father, Kenny Banks Sr., also a pianist, he learned the fundamentals of music theory, jazz, and composition. Under the guidance of his mother, a church music director, he found the church to be his first musical outlet. In his career Kenny has performed and toured with such jazz luminaries as Theo Croker, Darren English, Jennifer Holiday, Jazzmeia Horn, and Kenny Lattimore.

He performs regularly in New York at jazz clubs and with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and his artistry has enhanced numerous film and television productions originating in Atlanta.

Helen Sung, piano

Friday, February 12 · 7:00 PM

Sung plays with crisp swing and elegant invention, her rhythms drawing from the music’s deepest blues roots – and setting listeners’ heads bobbing – while she explores her own fresh ideas, often inspired from her classical training.

– The New York Times

Inspired by dialogues with Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientists and examining the arts as a celebration of our brains during her jazz residency at Columbia University’s prestigious Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Helen Sung’s Live Wire Project is music about bird song, the electric dance of neurons, and the wonders of our shared humanity.

Helen Sung’s Live Wire Project has been made possible with support from Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works program funded through the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Pianist, composer, and a Guggenheim Fellow, Helen Sung has worked with such luminaries as Clark Terry, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Cecile McLorin Salvant, and the Mingus Big Band. She currently serves on the faculties of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Columbia University, where she was the inaugural jazz artist-in-residence at its Zuckerman Institute exploring intersections of jazz and neuroscience.

Maria Howell, vocal

Friday, March 12 · 7:00 PM

One only needs to be within earshot to be drawn into the magic that is Maria.

– Carl Anthony, Notorious Jazz/Voice of the 2025 Atlanta Jazz Festival

Maria Howell brings her signature warmth, soul, and storytelling to All Saints’ as she and her quintet celebrate the enduring influence of three of the most iconic voices in American music—“The Ladies of Jazz: Ella, Billie, and Sarah.” With style and heart, Maria has an uncanny ability to inhabit the spirit of each legend while making their songs uniquely her own. Beloved standards, soulful ballads, and swinging favorites will stir memories and delight as she honors the music and legacy of these extraordinary women.

As a song stylist and actor, Maria Howell has owned the stage—from jazz clubs, festivals, and theaters across the U.S. as well as numerous film productions. She began her career as the choir soloist in the film The Color Purple and has appeared in The Vampire Diaries, Mississippi Damned, The Blind Side, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and, currently, the popular soap opera Beyond the Gates. She regularly appears in a duo act with Noel Freidline and with Atlanta’s Jazz Legacy Project. Maria also stars frequently at the Jazz Corner, the award-winning jazz club on Hilton Head Island, and her distinctive voice can be heard in commercials, video games, and audiobook narrations.