John Daversa is a distinguished trumpet-player, composer, arranger, producer, bandleader and educator. He is a multiple Grammy Award winner, Emmy nominee, and the recipient of many other awards including the Global Music Awards, IAMA Songwriting Award, City of Miami Beach “John Daversa Day,” and the Phillip Frost Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship.

In addition to his active career as a performer and recording artist, he is Professor and Chair of Studio Music and Jazz at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. John Daversa is a Schilke Music Artist (trumpet) and a Burglund Artist (NuEVI).

The John Daversa Big Band

Throughout its 25-year tenure, the multiple Grammy® Award winning John Daversa Big Band has passionately pursued a musical philosophy that aims to stretch boundaries, illuminate imagination, and explore new worlds of improvisational music.

Originating from Los Angeles, John Daversa brings his 18-piece jazz orchestra back to Yoshi’s featuring Grammy® Award and MacArthur Fellow, Dafnis Prieto on drums, with special guest vocalist, Tiffany Austin. The big band will perform music from Daversa’s Grammy® nominated album, Kaleidoscope Eyes: Music of the Beatles, the Grammy® winning, American Dreamers: Voices of Hope, Music of Freedom, and Global Music Award Best In Show winner, Junk Wagon: The Big Band Album.

Allied with musicians from Miami, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Daversa’s imaginative, genre- fusing compositions, arrangements, and improvisations have returned to Oakland!