There are few things you can bet on that are absolute certainties. In the music world the top of the list has to include how Kenny G will always confound critics while at the same time delighting his fans. Few instrumental artists, save perhaps Herb Alpert, have understood over long periods of time, and here we're talking decades, exactly what kind of music will respond to the public's heart. G has never had that problem.

1999 Carmine Caruso Jazz Trumpet Competition award winner Thomas Marriott has worked in Maynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau band, and with artists like Rosemary Clooney, Ritchie Cole, Charlie Hunter, Kenny Kirkland, Joe Locke, The Chico O’Farrill Orchestra, and The Tito Puente Orchestra, among others. Overall Marriott has appeared on over 100 recordings and his previous release, East-West Trumpet Summit, with Ray Vega, was feature on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”Marriott is joined w

Seattle-based trumpeter and composer, Chad McCullough, teams up with Slovakian and currently The Hague-based pianist, Michal Vanoucek, as leaders for a straight-ahead jazz quintet recording of ten original compositions. McCullough, who has earned degrees from the University of Idaho and the University of Washington, has worked in the Disneyland bands, and played piano and trumpet with the Glenn Miller ghost orchestra. Others he has worked with include Wynonna Judd, Claudio Roditi and Michael W

Freedom Suite is both different and unique and traditional and common at the same. Mixing hip-hop elements first done well, in a jazz vein, by Miles Davis on Boo-Dop, expanded in many ways with mixed results by Greg Osby on his 3-D Lifestyles, and made accessible and popish by Quincy Jones, this recording incorporates all of these influences as well as throwing in a few of its own. This music presented here is pop, R&B, hip-hop and jazzy, with the inclusion of straight-up interviews with a

These are tough times for jazz vocalists. Most have recorded all the life out of the American Songbook repertoire, beating standards into an early death. Yet, recordings of standards by jazz singers keep coming out and coming out, and coming out. Thank goodness there are a few vocalists, like Norma Winstone, who have uncompromising taste and are willing to step out on a ledge, usually with great results. Cassandra Wilson has always been one of these kinds of jazz singers. Sure, she’s covere