Upswing: Sullivan Fortner

New Orleans piano maestro Sullivan Fortner debuted at the SFJAZZ Center in the superlative company of Cécile McLorin Salvant. He celebrated Thelonious Monk’s birthday in 2024 with three sublime solo sets and riveted the San Francisco Jazz Festival audience last June with an expansive duo encounter with Ambrose Akinmusire. He makes his Miner Auditorium debut as a bandleader with his exquisitely calibrated trio, which seamlessly traverses more than a century of American music with a supple, celebratory Crescent City sensibility.