Sullivan Fortner, jazz piano Union College

Sunday, December 20, 2026 — 3:00 PM

We kick off a new tradition of jazz during the holidays! Winner of Downbeat Magazine’s 2024 Critic’s Poll, Fortner is a 2026 Grammy-winning pianist who was a regular member of trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s quintet. He plays a solo program of jazz standards and original compositions infused with his New Orleans roots.

Original works and jazz standards
RUNTIME: 70 MINUTES, NO INTERMISSION

Union College, Memorial Chapel — Schenectady, NY
General admission seating — doors open 45 minutes before concert.
All kids and college students admitted free at door.

About Sullivan Fortner

For more than a decade, Sullivan Fortner has been stretching deep-rooted talents as a pianist, composer, band leader and uncompromising individualist. The GRAMMY Award–winning artist and recipient of the 2026 Larry J. Bell Jazz Artist Award has garnered international praise as a leader and a fierce collaborator.

He earned the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance on Samara Joy’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Me” and the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album alongside Cécile McLorin Salvant for The Window, on which he serves as both key player and producer. Fortner also has earned GRAMMY nods for Solo Game and for his arrangement of “Optimistic Voices/No Love Dying” from Salvant’s Ghost Song.

As a solo leader he has issued Aria (2015), Moments Preserved (2018), Solo Game, and Southern Nights (2025), which landed him on the February cover of DownBeat. He won the 2024 DownBeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Jazz Group with the Sullivan Fortner Trio. His creative associations include Wynton Marsalis, Paul Simon, Diana Reeves, Etienne Charles, John Scofield and many longtime collaborators such as Ambrose Akinmusire, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Stefon Harris, Tivon Pennicott, Peter Bernstein and Nicholas Payton.

Coming up in New Orleans, Fortner began playing piano at age 7. He earned a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin Conservatory and a Master of Music in Jazz Performance from Manhattan School of Music. A champion of mentorship, he has offered masterclasses at MSM, NOCCA, Purdue University, Lafayette Summer Music Workshop, Belmont University and Oberlin Conservatory (where he has served on faculty and returned as visiting professor of jazz piano).

A highly sought improviser, Fortner has performed at venues including Snug Harbor, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Sweet Lorraine’s, The Jazz Playhouse, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jazz Standard and Smalls Jazz Club. He’s appeared at Newport, Monterey, Discover, Tri-C and Gilmore Keyboard jazz festivals, and brought his band to the Village Vanguard for a week-long engagement in 2019 (reprised as a virtual performance in 2020).

Notable studio contributions include work on Etienne Charles’ Kaiso (Culture Shock), Donald Harrison’s Quantum Leap (FOMP) and Theo Croker’s The Fundamentals (Left Sided Music).

Fortner’s artistry preserves the tradition and evolves the sound. He seeks connections among different musical styles that are at once deeply soulful and wildly inventive.