TIMES in jazz are hard enough. Chain-store music retailers are taking fewer and fewer jazz albums. Back catalogs are permanently endangered as parent companies of labels like Blue Note, Atlantic and Verve shift among new mergers and new top executives. Jazz clubs are becoming harder to sustain, and after the flowering of new jazz spots around Manhattan in the mid- and late- 90's, the attrition process had already begun. Then downtown fell apart. You must analyze the effect of Sept. 11 o …

Singer Al Jarreau has been known as a pop singer, a soul singer and a blues singer. However, for the longest time, he has always wanted to show that he is a jazz singer as well. His newest dynamite release Accentuate the Positive brings Jarreau into the jazz idiom with a style all his own. He says that recording the new CD was a joy for him. "Just like in other forms of music, you have to be yourself and show what you’re made of," says Jarreau. "This new release has been a labor of love f …

Jay Graydon is a much-celebrated artist wearing many hats, producing a staggering body of work that encompasses a full spectrum of disciplines in the music industry. This body of work transcends rock, pop and jazz with equal vigor and success. Mr. Graydon has been awarded two Grammy wins and ten more nominations for songwriting, performance, arranging, engineering and production duties. While somewhat an enigma, Jay is like a cat with nine lives, always re-inventing himself while landing on his …

Boney James is a tenured artist on the smooth jazz circuit who has just released his eighth recording "Ride" to a mix of retro-soul and current bass-tinged postproduction. Excited about the possibilities of reaching a wider audience, James has a collaborative effort focused on the R&B and Hip Hop crowd, with great vocals and instrumental colors. Although changing his jazzy sound to a more pop focus, Boney James still displays great performance and artistry with his vocal and instrumental efforts …

Kazu Matsui is synonymous with American cinema music, particularly the films that feature Ry Cooder and James Horner as composers. Bursting on the scene in the early eighties with his eerie, suspense-laden accompaniment of the epic TV movie SHOGUN, he has been an ever-growing staple of action films. While he is a resident of Huntington Beach, CA, Kazu is the main proponent of his instrument, the Japanese shakuhachi flute, in the Western world. While carrying on the tradition of his mystical inst …