Born into a musical family in the historically musical city of New Orleans, Louisiana, Kenyatta Beasley first began to play the trumpet at the age of three. Under the close tutelage of his father, the father-son combo became one of the most popular acts in New Orleans’ Historic French quarter.

At the age of nine, Kenyatta was chosen from a pool of almost 2,000 youngsters for the role of young Louis Armstrong in the touring/Broadway musical, satchmo: America’s Musical legend. Afterwards, Kenyatta joined the ranks of alumnus Wynton and Branford Marsalis, harry Connick Jr. and Terence Blanchard as a Jazz improvisation major at the prestigious New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. During this period, Kenyatta won numerous awards including the national foundation for advancement in the arts (NFAA) “Outstanding jazz soloist” (1994) and The International Association of Jazz educators Clifford Brown/Stan Getz fellowship (1994) 1995 saw Kenyatta move to New York City where he enrolled at the Mannes School of Music’s jazz performance and composition program. Shortly thereafter, Kenyatta was chosen as one of ten finalists in the 1997 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet competition.

In 2003, Kenyatta decided to move slightly away his established career in performance to focusing on a career as a composer for Film and TV. Now a master’s candidate at New York University’s scoring for film and multimedia program, Kenyatta studied with master orchestrator Sonny Kompanek (two weeks notice, the Alamo, It could happen to you).

The combination of his trumpet playing and versatile composition style has endeared him to New York’s independent film community. this notion was justified in Kenyatta winning the “Best Original Score” award at New York Magazine’s First Run Film festival and also an award for best original score at the 2005 “tribeca Film Festival”. In addition, Kenyatta had the honor of composing the music for the opening credits to the 2005 paramount release “get Rich Or Die Tryin.”

Currently, Kenyatta is working as a freelance composer at elias Arts while still performing with some of the most well known acts in jazz and popular music. Currently working with International pop Star Shakira, Kenyatta has appeared on a wide array of recordings and TV shows with such artist as P. Diddy, Lauryn Hill, The Saturday Night Live Band, ben Harper, Frank Foster, Ellis Marsalis, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Roy Hargrove Big Band, Lionel Hampton Orchestra, and Chaka Khan and Gloria Gaynor.