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.”