A virtuoso in two voices — clarinet & saxophone.

Born in New Orleans and seasoned by the cities that built modern jazz — New York, St. Louis, and the bandstands of every great American hall — Victor Goines has spent more than three decades among the music's most consequential voices. As a charter member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, he has performed on the recordings, the tours, and the late nights that became the canon.

Equally fluent on clarinet and saxophone, Goines moves between the instruments not as a doubler, but as an artist for whom both are mother tongues. The clarinet, his first love, carries the architecture of his phrasing; the saxophone carries its weight. Together they make the unmistakable sound of an American master.

Today he leads from multiple stages at once: as Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, as President and CEO of Jazz St. Louis, and as a composer whose works have entered the repertoire of the JLCO and ensembles across the country.