Every spring since 2004, eight of the country’s finest jazz musicians convene in San Francisco for a multi-week session of writing and rehearsing, before embarking on a performance series as the SFJazz Collective. SFJazz, the ensemble’s umbrella organization, is the West Coast’s largest nonprofit jazz institution and presenter of the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival.

“The general concept to have a band that has no leader, where everybody shares the leader position at different points,” said saxophonist and founding member Miguel Zenón during a recent interview with DCist. “The idea is to have a totally democratic ensemble.”

The ensemble assembles a new repertoire every year, combining original pieces with the work of a celebrated jazz musician who is also chosen through a democratic process. After exploring the works of late composers like Coltrane and Monk, the group now celebrates living legends. On Sunday, the Collective will come to the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center to apply its innovative approach to the music of hard bop pianist Horace Silver.

“We’re just trying to give due to all the composers that have added their significance to the development of jazz,” said Zenón, a winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant who DCist profiled earlier this year.