The Chick Corea Elektric Band's engagement last week at Catalina Bar & Grill was, as always, a popular ticket at the Hollywood venue. The keyboardist always played to a full house at the club's previous location, and the tables were just as full at Catalina's larger, new room; the only difference is that there seemed, thankfully to be more breathing room in between them. The Elektric Band offered this crowd a lengthy and challenging suite of songs from their ambitious new Stretch/Concord release

There are those artists who find a comfortable niche and work within it in for the better part of their productive lives. Others spend their careers seeking new sounds and means of expression. Which group does David Sanchez fit in? Well, consider this: his recent engagement at Boston's famed Regattabar was billed as a party celebrating the release of his latest CD Coral, but the show I saw featured compositions and arrangements that were even newer than that. The David Sanchez Quartet pla

The story of David "Honeyboy" Edwards reads like the history of the blues itself. Born in Shaw, Mississippi in 1915, he not only witnessed such originators of the Delta blues style Charley Patton firsthand but also performed as a young man with such historic players as Robert Johnson and "Big" Joe Williams. He was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1942 and has lived in Chicago for the last forty years. With each passing year Honeyboy's pre-eminence as a living master of the f

The 17th edition of the popular Long Beach Jazz Festival closed today on a successful and funky note with a veteran-heavy lineup including Roy Ayers, George Duke and Poncho Sanchez along with saxophonist Steve Cole, soulful crooner Kem, local legend Al Williams & the Jazz Society with Niki Haris and 2004 Jazz Search winner Julie Burrell. The annual three day event once again drew over 35,000 Jazz and R&B fans from all over Los Angeles County and Southern California to Rainbow Lagoon Park overloo

Today marks the long-awaited release of Karrin Allyson's latest CD, Wild For You. For most jazz lovers this will be the first opportunity to hear this new music, but several lucky fans here in Los Angeles were lucky enough to get a preview of her new material during her engagement at Catalina Bar & Grill in late May. Fronting a quintet consisting mainly of her long term bandmates, Ms. Allyson captivated the crowd with an enchanting mix of jazz standards, Brazilian ballads and songs from 1