Julius Tolentino
(MADISON, NJ) -- Alto saxophonist/educator Julius Tolentino received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Jazz Education from DownBeat Magazine in 2024, the same year his Newark Academy jazz band, Chameleon, won first place in Jazz at Lincoln Center's Essentially Ellington competition. Tolentino is in his 19th year as NA's Jazz Director, and this year he has the added responsibility of Arts Department Chair, overseeing an Arts program that also encompasses theater, dance, and visual art.
Tolentino's former students are sprinkled throughout the jazz landscape, and on Sunday, January 4, 2026, he will perform with three of them -- bassist Ian Kensalaar, pianist Ben Collins-Siegel, and his son, trumpeter Jacob Tolentino -- at the New Jersey Jazz Society's Jersey Jazz LIVE! concert held at the Madison (NJ) Community Arts Center.
"I try to get all my students to become their own best teachers," Tolentino told Jersey Jazz Magazine in a December 2024 interview. "I have a lot of strategies and little tricks of the trade to give them, to kind of analyze themselves in a positive way, to not be too hard on themselves." A graduate of the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music, Tolentino studied with the jazz program's founder, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. "It was really a godsend to be around Jackie for all those years," he recalled. "After I graduated (in 1997), he helped me get a gig with (tenor saxophonist) Illinois Jacquet. That was my first gig where I went on the road."
While Tolentino's primary focus is on education -- he also teaches at Princeton University and Jazz at Lincoln Center -- he still finds time to perform, often with one-time or current students. On Friday and Saturday, January 2 and 3, he will be leading a quartet at Smalls in New York.
Kensalaar (shown here), who lives in Jersey City and was mentored by Tolentino at Jazz House Kids, studied at Rutgers' Mason Gross School of the Arts with bassist Kenny Davis, drummer Victor Lewis, and alto saxophonist Mark Gross. In the early days of his post-college career, Kensalaar was a regular at drummer Winard Harper's jam sessions at Jersey City's Moore's Lounge. In 2017, Kensalaar was selected to be one of 12 recipients of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute Fellowship and spent a week studying composition with bassist Rufus Reid, pianist Billy Childs, and tenor saxophonist Nathan Davis. Since 2018, the bassist has been a member of tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen's trio.
Collins-Siegel was one of Tolentino's students at Newark Academy and is now a freshman at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music where he is part of the elite Stamps Scholars Program. A resident of Maplewood, NJ, Collins spent last summer as part of Carnegie Hall's NYO Jazz Orchestra, which extends invitations to 23 students from across the country. In addition to playing with Tolentino while home on break, Collins-Siegel also performed with guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli at his "Swinging into the Holidays and More" concert on December 21 at the South Orange Performing Arts Center.
Ben Collins-Siegel, photo by Todd Rosenberg
Jacob Tolentino graduated from Newark Academy in 2024 and is now a Jazz Studies major at Michigan State University's College of Music. As Julius Tolentino's son, jazz has always been a part of his life. He was a Rising Star in the November 2023 issue of Jersey Jazz and said he realized he wanted to play jazz when he was in the second grade. "I kind of wanted to play the drums at first," he recalled, "but I had an easier time on the trumpet, so I just stuck with that. I didn't take it that seriously at the start," he said, "but once I started playing with smaller combos and big bands, I realized that I liked it."
Jacob Tolentino
Tickets are available for purchase online. The Madison Community Arts Center is located at 10 Kings Road in Madison, NJ. The Jersey Jazz LIVE! concerts begin at 3 p.m. Admission is $15 for NJJS members and $20 for non-members. Student admission is $5 with valid ID. There will be light refreshments for purchase.
Funding for Jersey Jazz Live! has been made possible, in part, by funds from Morris Arts through the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of The National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding is provided by The Summit Foundation.
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