Entre Amigos - Album Release

Entre Amigos is a creative collaboration featuring award-winning Chicago-based musicians Roy McGrath (Sax), Gustavo Cortiñas (Drums), Hana Fujisaki (piano), and Kitt Lyles (Bass). The group draws on more than a decade of rich musical friendship to create honest and exciting sonic experiences. Featuring original compositions by each member, Entre Amigos’ music masterfully blends the sounds of Jazz tradition and innovation through hard-hitting arrangements that cut the fluff and reveal each musician’s singular voice. Following a month-long tour in Asia in January 2024, the group hopped off the plane and into the studio to cut two soon-to-be released albums, capturing the music and emotions fresh from the tour. 

ROY MCGRATH

Roy McGrath is Entre Amigos’ tenor saxophonist, multi-woodwind instrumentalist, and band visionary/chief gig wrangler. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and educated in Boston, New Orleans, and Chicago, Roy brings these diverse influences to bear through his titanic yet nimble saxophone concept. Roy’s compositions are firmly in the Jazz tradition, but his Caribbean heritage is ever-present, leading to wholly original works that are a true expression of who he is. 

Roy’s original albums “Remembranzas” (2017, Latin GRAMMY nominated) and “Menjunje” (2023) explore folkloric Bomba rhythms and other Puerto Rican and Afro-Caribbean influences through a Jazz framework. 

GUSTAVO CORTIÑAS

Embracing multicultural languages and a multi-disciplinary aesthetic approach, Mexican-born drummer and lyricist Gustavo Cortiñas continues to surpass himself in the breadth of his work. He is Entre Amigos’ philosopher of rhythm and musical truth teller. In the words of DownBeat Magazine, “Cortiñas' music is uplifting, robust, melodic, and gets your body moving; it's an exciting blend of the artist's musical influences from Jazz and Latin America, including his native Mexico.”

Cortiñas has released five original albums distilling complex phenomena into accessible musical experiences including philosophical discourses, colonialism and resistance in Latin America, migration and empathy in times of border walls, and other facets of the human experience: "Snapshot" (2013), "ESSE" (2017), “Desafío Candente” (2021), “Kind Regards/Saludos Afectuosos” (2022), and “Live in Chicago” (2024). 

HANA FUJISAKI

Hana Fujisaki is by far Entre Amigos’ classiest and smoothest member, contributing buttery piano tones and elegant compositions to the band. She began her musical journey studying organ and contemporary music at Yamaha Music School in Japan, where she won multiple awards as an organist and composer. She moved to the U.S. in 2012 and studied Jazz and Latin music under Pat Coil, Jim Trompeter, and Jeremy Kahn, ultimately earning her M.M. from Northwestern University in 2018.

Fujisaki masterfully shifts between disparate musical settings, playing hymns on the pipe-organ in the morning before rocking out on Keytar at night. In addition to her regular appearances in some of Chicago's most prestigious musical venues, she has also toured and performed in New York, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, and Shanghai. 

KITT LYLES

Kitt Lyles is one of Chicago’s most distinctive bassists and composers, and the guy who glues Entre Amigos together through steadfast low end warmth. Born and raised in South Carolina, Lyles has cultivated an aesthetic that synthesizes his love for Southern roots music with imaginative contemporary Jazz. Unafraid to channel romance and grit alike and unwilling to sacrifice the centrality of melody, Lyles draws out the bass’ most vocal personality. “Composer/bassist Lyles is a sterling example of why Chicago is, in my view, the capital city of modern working Jazz musicians” -Hobart Taylor of KUCI radio

Lyles’ original works Real Talk (2015) and "Wake Before Dawn" (2020) reach beyond Jazz’s more intellectual tendencies to the organic joy and human expression found in folk music around the world, and bring together dozens of musicians from across Chicago’s Jazz, classical, and Latin music scenes and from Lyles’ hometown in South Carolina.

Host or Publisher Jazz Showcase