He was the 2005 winner of the Richmond Jazz Society's Joe Kennedy Jr. Scholarship and has composed for and performed with such luminaries as Al Jarreau, Mulgrew Miller, Nellie McKay, Desiree Roots and others. He's the founder/director of the seventeen-piece Upper East Side Big Band and was co-owner and booking manager from 2003-05 of the Upper East Side Lounge in Richmond, Virginia. And he's only 23 years old. No wonder he's called Samson.