The London Saxophone Festival presents two fantastic saxophonists who are currently pushing the boundaries of their instruments and welcoming an audience of both old and new to their interpretation of jazz with international acclaim. Both Grammy Award Winners, we present Bob Reynolds from Snarky Puppy and Casey Benjamin from the Robert Glasper Experiment.

Bob Reynolds
Saxophonist Bob Reynolds is a Grammy Award-winning member of the band Snarky Puppy, an in-demand jazz performer, educator, and sideman. Born in Morristown, New Jersey in 1977, he honed his skills at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he mentored with George Garzone, Hal Crook, and others.

He joined fellow Berklee alum John Mayer’s band and spent the next five years with the pop star, touring and recording. In 2013, he returned to his solo work with Somewhere in Between, which reached No. 1 in the jazz charts. He then made his Snarky Puppy debut appearing on the genre-bending group’s 2014 effort We Like It Here. Two years later he was back with Snarky Puppy for the Grammy Award-winning Culcha Vulcha. In 2017, Reynolds delivered the EP Guitar Band, which featured appearances from Kneebody bassist Kaveh Rastegar, as well as fellow Snarky Puppy members Robert “Sput” Searight (drums) and Mark Lettieri (guitar).

Casey Benjamin aka Stutz McGhee
Double Grammy Award-winning Casey Benjamin is the first original member of the Robert Glasper Experiment. Through his melodic ingenuity on the vocoder, textual mastery on the keytar and spiky virtuosity on the alto, soprano and tenor saxophone, he has worked with a string of other stellar musicians that, from jazz to hip-hop, include: Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, singer Betty Carter, bassist Derrick Hodge, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, trumpeter Roy Hargrove, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and A Tribe Called Quest to name a few.

Benjamin’s defining sounds has enabled him to gain international acclaim in the jazz, R&B and hip-hop scenes on such trailblazing albums as Black Radio and Black Radio 2 both released on Blue Note Records.