ENTRE AMIGOS

BLUESTEM JAZZ | 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 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. 

Hana Fujisaki is a Chicago-based keyboardist, composer, and music educator. 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 Key-tar at night. Her musical versatility is showcased by the variety of musical projects and theater productions she collaborates with including Chicago Samba, The Fly Honey Show, CoryaYo, Brandon James, Vox Maris, Da$htone, The Phunk Nasty's, Los Perros Cubanos, Rojo Tango, Hitched, and ORiHANA. 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, and Shanghai. Fujisaki is also a passionate music educator who currently directs a choir and teaches piano and music theory classes at Harold Washington College.

Kitt Lyles is one of Chicago’s most distinctive bassists and composers. 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. Through his lyrical compositional style, inspired by the musical lineage of Charles Mingus and Duke Ellington, he seeks to highlight his musicians’ unique voices as well.  A graduate of Northwestern University (BM Jazz Studies, 2013), An active performer, composer, and educator in the Chicago jazz community. He has been featured on 36 studio recordings and toured and taught masterclasses across the US, Latin America, and Asia, including festivals and venues such as The Chicago Jazz Festival, The Charlotte Jazz Festival, The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Festival Espontáneo in Chiapas, MX, The Chicago Latin Jazz Festival, The Blue Note in Beijing, Blu Jazz Singapore, Zinco Jazz Club in Mexico City, Snug Harbor in New Orleans, ShapeShifter Lab in NYC, The Green Mill, The Jazz Showcase, The Old Town School of Folk Music, and The Logan Center at UChicago.

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), “Desafio Candente”

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