Drummer Evan Sherman (photo above) will kick off the South Orange Performing Arts Center’s 2026 Jazz in the Loft series on Sunday evening January 11. He will be followed by trumpeter Diego Urcola on February 15, and guitarists Marel Hidalgo on March 22 and Yotam Silberstein (photo below) on April 12.
Sherman was Jersey Jazz Magazine’s first Rising Star, in the March/April 2020 issue. In December 2020, while playing a popup concert on New York City’s Upper West Side, he jammed with Wynton Marsalis in what became a segment on The Today Show. In June 2022, Sherman led a quartet at the first Jersey Jazz LIVE! concert held by the New Jersey Jazz Society at the Madison (NJ) Community Arts Center. He has toured with Grammy Award-winning vocalist Samara Joy, and, in November 2024, one of the highlights at SOPAC’s Giants of Jazz concert honoring drummer Lewis Nash was a trio performance of Arthur Schwartz’s “You and the Night and the Music” with pianist Emmet Cohen and bassist Rufus Reid.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Urcola has been a member of clarinetist/saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera’s Quintet since 1991. He has also performed with the late tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath and the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Star Big Band.
When Hidalgo played at Newark’s Clements Place last July with organist Leonieke Scheuble and drummer Roger Humphries, AllAboutJazz called him “a guitar prodigy whose command of the instrument belies his age.” He is 17.
Silberstein’s latest album is Standards Vol. 2, released on Jojo Records last summer. Reviewing it for Jersey Jazz, Joe Lang wrote: “If you dig straight-ahead, swinging takes on songs from the Great American Songbook, Standards Vol. 2 by Israeli guitarist Yotam Silberstein should be right up your alley.”
The South Orange Performing Arts Center is located at One SOPAC Way in South Orange, NJ. The Sunday Jazz in the Loft concerts begin at 7 p.m. For more information or to order tickets, log onto sopacnow.org or call (973) 313-2787.
EVAN SHERMAN PHOTO BY JACK GRASSA
