Bio

Edward Gavitt is a Dominican-American guitarist, composer, audio engineer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a BFA in Jazz Performance and an MA in Music from The City College of New York, and has pursued specialized study in music theory and composition at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Gavitt has collaborated with musicians including Anna Webber, Tyshawn Sorey, and Ingrid Laubrock, and performed at venues such as The Jazz Gallery, The Stone, and Shapeshifter Lab. He has also opened for artists including Ben Monder, Theo Bleckmann, and the Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio. His teachers have included guitarists Kenny Wessell and Miles Okazaki, and composers Kendall Briggs and Daniel Felsenfeld.

His current bandleader projects include the trio Meerkat, the quartet Plurabilities, and the collaborative band Secret Mall, a jazz-electronic fusion band featuring Alfredo Colon, Theo Walentiny, Steve Williams, and Andres Valbuena.

Gavitt has a deep interest in audio engineering and previously led operations and sound engineering at The Jazz Gallery. He has worked on a number of albums, notably Alfredo Colon’s Blood Burden, Adam Rudolph’s Beingness, and Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo’s Grammy-nominated album El Arte del Bolero. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he played an integral role in the New York jazz scene by strengthening live-streaming infrastructure across major venues, including The 55 Bar, Bar Bayeux, and The Jazz Gallery, and advising other venues on their setups.

As an educator, Gavitt has taught at The City College of New York, through private instruction, and at music schools and academies in New York and online. He currently serves as Assistant Dean for Artistic Operations at Manhattan School of Music, where he oversees ensembles across jazz, chamber music, and orchestral departments.