Omar Abdulkarim & Anthony Coleman II

“the essence of what jazz is.” – Jazz Police

Omar Abdulkarim has been playing trumpet since the early age of fourteen months. Omar holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Performance from the renowned New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. He has shared the stage with Roy Hargrove, Redman, Method Man, KRS-ONE and Talib Kweli to mention a few. Omar has also had the pleasure of performing with Nicholas Payton’s Television Studio Orchestra and Valerie Ponomarev’s Big Band. Omar has written and recorded with Lauryn Hill and Jose James. His influences include Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, John Coltrane and Lee Morgan.

After living in New York for eleven years, where he completed the undergraduate program at the New School, Omar moved back to Minnesota where he is currently composing new music for his upcoming album, performing with Source Code and the Minnesota Hard Bop Collective, and more.

Anthony Coleman II keeps his feet on the ground and his horn in the sky.

Paramount for Anthony is the idea of respect; respect for the roots and traditions of jazz, which earned him a spot in the inaugural class of Dave Brubeck, Don Byas, and Christian McBride’s Brubeck Institute of Jazz; and respect for the vitality of the present, which has made him an in-demand live performer and studio musician for artists like Ludacris, Joss Stone, and Raphael Saadiq.

Coleman’s native California informs every soulful groove he lays down, and in a post-Young Lion world, jazz needs all the personality it can get. Anthony’s a distinguished representative of the new vanguard of young musicians, and his relentless fight for virtuosity and integrity in modern music makes him an ideal candidate for bringing jazz into the 21st century.