Merkin Concert Hall’s popular Jazz Breakthroughs series, hosted by noted jazz scholar and WKCR Radio personality Phil Schaap, offers two concerts in December highlighting the invention of today’s jazz masters. On Monday, December 3 at 8 PM, the program features the acclaimed saxophonist Joe Lovano and his Flights of Fancy. Of his recent recording of the same title, Lovano says, "It’s having fun and playing music with a free approach, so every time you play, it’ …

On Thursday, February 7 at 8 PM, New Sounds® Live welcomes jazz pianist and composer Uri Caine to the Merkin Hall stage. Known for his re-interpretations of various composers and styles, Caine here tackles J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations filtering the masterwork through his own lens and spinning out a unique theme and variations. Caine has been praised as "knowing when to bend his beautiful borrowings and when to leave them be"(The Guardian). Dick Connette and Sonya Cohe …

The Kaufman Center presents From Bach to Ellington, a benefit performance for the Center's Lucy Moses School , featuring internationally-acclaimed jazz pianist Ted Rosenthal ("a pianist of rarest skill, weaving rapid single note lines that span out into rich chordal patterns, parallel octaves and hints of the blues," The Los Angeles Times) alongside award-winning classical pianist Rorianne Schrade (described by The New Yorker as a performer with "wit, passion, and …