The Tino Kayafas Jazz Trio

A native of Cambridge, OH, and a student of such prestigious programs as the Columbus Youth Jazz Orchestra and the Michigan State University Jazz Studies Program, where he studied under Rodney Whitaker. He toured nationally and internationally with the Larry Fuller Trio from 2017 to 2019, and has performed as a sideman with bandleaders including Wessell Anderson, Peter Bernstein, Bobby Broom, Tia Fuller, Philip and Winard Harper, Christian Howes, Willie Jones III, Wynton Marsalis, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Tomoko Omura, Johnny O'Neal, Houston Person, Ben Paterson, Jeremy Pelt, Bria Skonberg, as well as many others in New York and throughout the United States. He is active nationally as a bandleader and educator, and has worked with programs including Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz for Young People, Christian Howes’ Creative Strings Workshop, and Keith Hall's Summer Drum Intensive. He is also the director of the Midwestern arts initiative Appalachian Muse.

Drummer, Dancer, Public-Speaker, & Entrepreneur: just a few of the professional titles Tino Kayafas has found himself representing at age 23. Tino was born and raised in the lovely Wheeling, WV, and was immersed in Greek music and dance from the time he could walk. It was then he started his journey reckoning his artistic identity as both a proud Greek - and an American.

At age 11 Tino first picked up the drum sticks and age 18 when he took his first drum set lesson. At West Virginia University Tino studied under The Dap King’s own, Brian Wolfe, recreating a solid foundation on his instrument and entering into his exploration of the American-Jazz and Greek-Traditional idioms.

Nearing the end of his time at West Virginia University, Kayafas recorded his debut record, My Heart, My Soul - a live album - with the brilliance of his two friends and mentors: Lefteris Kordis & George DeLancey. With the creation of this album, Kayafas marks the beginning of his musical career.

Tino currently resides in Cleveland, OH and studies Traditional Greek hand percussion under George Lernis as a member of the New England Greek Orchestra . You’ll also find Tino playing with his local Greek Ensemble, The Meraklides, and with his trio, The Tino Kayafas Jazz Trio.

Pianist, Composer, and Inner Circle Music recording artist Lefteris Kordis has established himself as a unique voice in the Mediterranean Jazz genre. He grew up in Elefsis, an ancient and multi-cultural town near Athens, Greece. Since age four, he studied, performed, and composed based on a wide spectrum of genres including Greek Folk, European Chamber, and Jazz.

Kordis started on piano at age 4, ingesting broad swaths of the classical tradition and soon-thereafter, jazz. Before he turned 18 he had performed with legendary Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. That was an excellent start to a career that’s seen him supporting many maestros in Jazz (Steve Lacy, Sheila Jordan, Joe Lovano, Greg Osby, Robin Eubanks), and Greek Folk (Panayotis Lalezas, Glykeria, Vasilis Saleas), at festivals and major venues (Carnegie Hall, Panama JF, Toronto JF, Athens Epidaurus Festival, Jordan Hall, and many Universities across the US), worldwide.

Lefteris Kordis, as well as the music he writes, is truly ‘worldwide’. In addition to the aforementioned genre masteries (Jazz, Greek Folk), Kordis brings a musicologist’s ear for the un-tempered harmonies of ancient Byzantine chant. Not to mention, a couple-hundred Sundays experience as the organist and choir director at Boston’s historic Columbus Ave AME Zion Church. Given that broad variety of musical languages fluently spoken, one understands his recruitment by Danilo Pérez to teach at Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute, and his recent appointment to the Ionian University in Corfu.

Lefteris Kordis writes and plays so that all these genre boundaries are ever artfully-blurred, and sometimes erased entirely. It’s a watercolor kind of art, he tells us by the title of his new, and 7th album, Aquarelles, which features a shifting ensemble of Jazz and Greek Folk heavies (Jerry Bergonzi, Lefteris Bournias, Edmar Colon, Dor Herskovirts, Brad Barrett, Jorge Roeder, Harris Lambrakis, Eviatar Slivnik, among many others).