Baikida Carroll ( composer, trumpet ) is a highly pivotal figure in the music world. He has written scores that have distinguished theater, dance, TV, film and concerts for three decades. His music has been heard at major forums throughout the world including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Walker Arts Center, New York Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theatre, Asolo Theatre, Le Grande Palais (Paris), the Belgium Opera, La Mama Theatre, The Corcoran Gallery, Crossroads Theater, the Berlin Opera, the Chicago Art Museum, the Mark Taper Forum, the Market Theater in South Africa, and the JVC, Heritage, Kool, Texaco and Montreux Jazz Festivals

His theater works include The Mighty Gents by Richard Wesley, Eugene Sheen by Malinke Elliot, Poem for a Revolutionary Night by Larry Neal, Coontown Bicentennial Memorial Service with Julius Hemphill, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, Miss Julie by August Strindberg, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, Legacies by Kermit Frasier, Greensboro A Requiem by Emily Mann, Betrayal by Harold Pinter, A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen, King Lear by William Shakespeare, Safe as Houses by Richard Greenberg and The Mai by Marina Carr. He also scored the hugely acclaimed musical Betsey Brown by Emily Mann and Ntozake Shange and the 1995 Tony Award nominated Broadway hit show, Having Our Say by Emily Mann.
 
As a musician, he has performed and recorded with such artists as Dewey Redman, Oliver Nelson, Albert King, David Murray, Jay McShann, Amiri Baraka, Patti Labelle, Little Milton, Michael Gregory, David Sancious, Sam Rivers, Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, Roscoe Mitchell, Dr. John, Anthony Davis, Anthony Braxton, June Jordan and Reggie Workman. He was a featured soloist on Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D. and Coon Bid'ness, Oliver Lake's premier album NTU, John Carter's classic Castles of Ghana, Muhal Richard Abrams' 1983 Down Beat Record of the Year Blues Forever, Jack DeJohnettes' acclaimed Inflation Blues and Sam River's 2000 Grammy nominated Inspiration . His own recordings include Orange Fish Tears, The Spoken Word, Shadows and Reflections, Door of the Cage and the 2001 release Marionettes on a High Wire.