It used to be that each city had its own recognizable sound. Besides New York, there was Motown, the New Orleans thing, Memphis and Chicago. Each had his or her own brand of blues, jazz, funk and eclectic provincial mixes. Even Philly had its sound. Now with stylistic homogenization, increased travel and the Internet, things only hint at identities once strong and recognizable. Music is the sum of its creators and purveyors. With the gradual restoration of the original values that put these citi …

Forty years after he began his music career, Jazz trumpeter Randy Brecker comes to life as he talks about the new directions emerging in the genre. Brecker says that the globalization of Jazz music, "just adds to the spicy mix of Jazz." He points to bassist Richard Bona from Minta Eastern Cameroon as a perfect example of someone who has infused a new element into Jazz. "His brand of Jazz is mixed in with an incredible array of folk influences that you just couldn't get from somebody who …

The names just keep rolling as if from a waterfall Miles, and Miles’ alumni, John McLaughlin, Don Alias, John Scofield, Mike Stern, Al Foster, Marcus Miller, Robben Ford - also Randy Brecker, Les McCann, Andy Summers of the Police, Willie Nelson, Bruce Hornsby, Trilok Gurtu, Manolo Badrena, Elements, and many others. All these Evans has worked with in his over 25-year career. Regardless of the lineup, the angular blues lines and implied harmony remain all about the groove for Evans. "Big Fun" …

Jazz music is not just about hipness and swing, but it’s also about intellect. Among the younger generation of players, there are few more intellectual practioners than pianist Brad Mehldau. Liner note readers were given an erudite treat with his 1999 Warner Bros. release, Elegiac Cycles, in which Mehldau lays his aesthetic credo in considerable detail. In the December 2003 edition of Jazz Times, he used a somewhat absurd debate about whether Sonny Rollins or Sonny Stitt is the …

Though it’s all story-telling to the six-time Grammy winner who turns seventy on August 25, among the many other dimensions experienced in the music of Wayne Shorter are essentially its mystery, expansion of spirit, angular beauty, abstract truth, ponderous thoughtfulness and an uncannily synchronistic nature. Since joining the modern music world's elite core of improvisers and composers in 1959 via Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and as a leader in the Blue Note stable, Shorter's consistently …