Since 1991, British trombonist, Dennis "Badbone" Rollins, has made a jazz noise in saxophonist Courtney Pine's challenging band. And, he's done the super bad soul thing with funk fusionaires like Brand New Heavies, US3 and Jamiroquai. Now he's exploring his own groove, gathering together a band of jazz-funk pranksters called Badbone & Co. They've just released an eponymously titled debut disc that's doing surprising things on the British charts: hitting No. 3 on the JazzWise poll and No 4 on Air …

At the close of his trio’s recent Merkin Hall concert in New York, pianist Tord Gustavsen introduced the group’s last offering of the night as "another wordless hymn." It’s as honest a description of this Norwegian export’s musical métier as one can find. In typical exploratory fashion, the trio began the 75-minute set not with a familiar piece from their acclaimed debut Changing Places or something from the just released The Ground, but with a new piece entitled "At Home." Though the band’s

Duke Ellington’s "discovery" of Abdullah Ibrahim (then Adolf Johannes "Dollar" Brand) in the early sixties was less a case of Western jazz imperialism and more a case of Ellington discovering an authentic tributary of the jazz continuum flowing from its African source. The South African pianist had already established himself as a musical innovator on his native continent and in Europe (he was living in Switzerland when Ellington came upon him). His 1959 group with Hugh Masekela, the Cape Tow

Any talk of comeback in music is generally more a case of the fickle attention span of the audience than any lack of attention to art by the artist. But when the saxophonist, composer and bandleader Charles Lloyd returned to regular playing in the early nineties, it was indeed a cause for musical celebration. After clamoring to the largest popular audience of any jazz artist of the '60s, cloistering himself in a near-monastic semi-retirement in the '70s and forging one of the brightest 'comeback

"Please welcome," said saxophonist James Carter with his jazz poster-boy looks, immaculate gray suit and rapper’s diamond ring, "in his debut on this stage ." Could that be true of the former enfant terrible of the Seventies loft scene, co-founder one of jazz’s most universally acclaimed and innovative ensembles, the World Saxophone Quartet, and the man Gary Giddins and the Village Voice named "Jazz Man of the 80’s"? His first gig at the Blue Note - and as a sideman for one of his disciples?