Kenny Rittenhouse
Music Director
kenny@bbj-youthorchestra.org
Kenny Rittenhouse has led his own jazz quartet for the past 20 years, performing in and around the Washington, DC area. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Trumpet at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. He has performed with many great jazz artists including Larry Willis, Ralph Peterson, Don Braden, Buck Hill, and Steve Wilson. He is a member of The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and had a 30 year career as a member of The U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble in Washington, DC, the premier band of the U.S. Army.
Bob Murad
Associate Music Director
Bob is a pianist, composer and recording artist who has performed as both a leader and sideman in numerous jazz venues throughout Washington DC, New York, and the Midwest. He debuted his well-received 2015 CD “The Observer” as a band leader. Bob lives in Washington, DC where he performs, composes and teaches jazz piano and improvisation.
Fred Foss (1949-2019)
Founding Music Director
Fred Foss was a native New Yorker who started studying music at the age of 19. He performed with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, Hugh Masekela, Dollar Brand, Tito Puente, Patti Labelle, The Temptations, and The Four Tops. Foss also worked with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He taught music at the Filmore School and the University of Maryland. Fred created the Fred Foss Youth Orchestra which performed in Cuba’s Havana Jazz Festival. Foss enjoys teaching his knowledge and wisdom to young musicians who, in many cases, become professional musicians. In 2019, the DC Jazz festival honored Fred with it Lifetime Achievement Award.
Board of Directors
J.C. Jefferson Jr.
Executive Director
J.C. Jefferson Jr. is a 4th generation Washingtonian who began performing jazz as a teenager in 1984 under the direction of trumpeter Webster Young in the" Lettum Play" youth jazz ensemble. Over the years J. has performed jazz, and R&B with artist such as Benny Golson, Larry Willis, Fred Wesley, Butch Warren, Buck Hill, Rene Mclean, Cecil Payne, Ralph Peterson Jr. Hip Pocket; vocalists Denise Jannah and Sheryl Lee Ralph; Poet DJ Renegade (Joel Dais Porter) and the Coasters to name a few. J. has been a fixture on the DC jazz scene and regularly performs with Bill Heid, Imani and Pepe Gonzales, Vince Evans and the Kenny Rittenhouse quartet. J has taught percussion privately and has been on the staff of the Levine School of Music and the Jazz Academy of Music.
Gary Mason
Director
Gary is an attorney in Washington, DC who specializes in consumer class actions. He is a Founding Partner of Whitfield Bryson & Mason LLP, a plaintiffs law firm with offices in Raleigh, NC, Nashville, TN and Washington, DC. His son, Matthew (16), a drummer, joined the BBJYO when it started in 2017. Gary served as Executive Director from 2018 to 2022. Gary lives in Bethesda with his wife, Thea, and son, Matthew. His daughter, Jessica, is a Senior at Wesleyan University.
Rick Brown
Vice-President
Rick Brown is a native Washingtonian and has been a life-long real estate broker and investor. Raised in Silver Spring, he and his family reside in Potomac and Kent Island, Maryland. He purchased the Bethesda Theater in 2012 and built the Bethesda Blues & Jazz Supper Club into one of the premier entertainment venues in the Mid Atlantic region. Raised by a jazz drummer, he created the Bethesda Blues & Jazz Youth Orchestra to provide a venue for young aspiring players to study and learn their craft. He is a Senior Project Director with The Pacific Institute, a leading company in the field of individual and organizational performance training.
David Parker
Director
Dave is an investor and Founder's Club member of Bethesda Blues and Jazz Club. A graduate of Georgetown University, he has spent over 30 years as an IT Sales and Marketing Executive with organizations including: IBM, Oracle, EMC Corporation, and most recently Pure Storage. A resident of Silver Spring, MD, Dave is an avid bass player who performs with his band, Off Color and with the Journey's Crossing Church band in Germantown, MD.
Daryl Davis
Director
Daryl is an American R&B and blues musician, activist, author, actor and bandleader. Known for his energetic style of boogie-woogie piano, Daryl has played with such musicians as Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, B. B. King, Bruce Hornsby, and Bill Clinton. His efforts to improve race relations, in which as an African-American he engaged with members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), have been reported on by media such as CNN, NPR, and The Washington Post.
Cynthia Ellis-Givens
Director
Cynthia Ellis-Givens is a native of Savannah, Georgia and graduate of Savannah State University with a bachelors degree in chemistry. Cynthia spent most of her career in pharmaceutical sales for three of the top Fortune 100 pharmaceutical companies. She is an active member and leader in several social, community and national organizations including Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Jack and Jill of America Inc., and Wings for Joy. As founder of “Let Me Be Me” LLC., she is dedicated to supporting youth access to the arts and providing a bridge to under-served communities. A resident of Silver Spring, MD, Cynthia is the mother of BBJYO vocalist Alexa Givens.
Ruth H. Catan
Director
Ruth H. Catan joined the BBJYO family when her twin daughters, Helen and Carolyn auditioned and became members in January, 2018. Helen is a guitarist and Carolyn is a drummer-roles they have singularly performed for the 2021-2022 BBJYO jazz year (they have also participated as clarinetists). Helen and Carolyn caught the jazz bug in 4th grade, playing in the school jazz bands where they play currently, but they wanted a commercial jazz band experience and an opportunity to perform with jazz legends such as Freddy Cole, Fred Foss, Sullivan Fortner, Sean Jones, and Sharon Clark. We are thrilled this is our fourth year with the BBJYO however, Helen and Carolyn will graduate high school in 2022 and Ruth will join this amazing Board of Directors and amazing Musical Directors. When Ruth is not attending performances and appreciating jazz and all other forms of musical expression, she is the Commercial and IP paralegal at NASA, Headquarters.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Director
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench, Balm, and most recently Take My Hand. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Dolen received a DC Commission on the Arts Grant for her second novel BALM which was published by HarperCollins in 2015. In 2013, she wrote the introduction to a special edition of Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, published by Simon & Schuster, which became a New York Times bestseller. She followed that with an introduction to Elizabeth Keckly's Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House published in 2016.
Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. On behalf of the foundation, she has visited nearly every public high school in the District of Columbia to talk about the importance of reading and writing. She is currently Associate Professor in the Literature Department at American University in Washington, DC.