With his experience performing with artists as diverse as Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand and Chet Atkins, and with a solo career plus working in the smooth jazz super group Fourplay, guitarist Larry Carlton always goes back to where he got started, with the blues. When he heard his first blues album by B.B. King back when he was 15, he knew that he would always be influenced by that experience. In his live performances, the highlight of the show is when he performs the blues …

There are times in our lives when we tend to face the doorway to our abyss with trepidation and apprehension, an unknown entity that never seems to evade us, filled with turmoil. However, some are able to defend fear by escaping to a place devoid of hate, complexity and turbulence land geographically located in our minds that enables us to face the abyss with assurance and hope. How often is music the vehicle that takes us there? So to that, we ride with the talent of Keiko Matsui to the "Wal …

Richard Smith is a guitarist who not only has a successful solo career, but helps future guitarists as well. Smith, who backed up saxophonist Richard Elliot on his first six CD's and has just released his eighth solo project called Soulidified, is founder of the GuitarMasters Workshop. The program is a community outreach in South Central Los Angeles that helps at-risk youth by providing free guitars, lessons, mentoring and classes. Smith, who is also a tenured professor at the Univers …

For over 30 years, sax man Kirk Whalum has been in the forefront of the modern era of jazz. During that time, he has earned seven Grammy nominations, recorded numerous number one albums and had a number one smooth jazz hit last year with his version of Luther Vandross' "Give Me The Reason" from his The Babyface Songbook release. Whalum continues to bridge urban music styles with his new release Roundtrip. Roundtrip looks at all areas of Whalum's career, yesterday, today a …

A group named after the city that was bombed by a nuclear warhead in World War II is helping to bridge the world by music. Hiroshima has been performing since 1974 to help bring alive a philosophy that was first mentioned by Duke Ellington when he recorded The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse back in 1971. At that time, Ellington felt that Asian people were coming into the music scene and that all people would be able to perform together. When June Kuramoto first came to the U.S. at the age of s …