Call me an ol’ Humbug, but I’m generally allergic to most Christmas music while some of it is beautiful, a lot of it is overly sentimental in that syrupy TV movie of the week way. Perhaps Brian Setzer understands that many feel similar, turning the attention of his big band to some Xmas classics, all the while amping up the Hep Factor. For those unfamiliar with the lad’s resume, Brian Setzer is best known as the guitarist/singer of the Stray Cats, a rockablilly revivalist trio that, while dissed

Schuba’s is a tasteful but thoroughly unpretentious music club/restaurant in/near the Lakeview/Wrigglyville section of Chicago very good live sound quality, very good food that usually hosts alternative/indie rock, folk and country sounds. But they’re branching out into this odd thing called "jazz music," and this past Sunday night, Schuba’s was the host to the Chicago debut of one of the grand-daddies of the UK avant-garde jazz/free-improv scene. British alto saxophonist Trevor Watts has

Jean-Michel Pilc is a French piano player (let’s say post-bop, or hard bop with occasional avant-garde overtones) whose touring travels brought him to Chicago’s Green Mill (one of the oldest if not THE oldest jazz clubs in town) with a talented trio consisting of bassist Toma Bramerie and drummer Ari Hoenig, and we in Chicagoland (what "we" call the greater Chicago area) were all the better for it. Anyone expecting an evening of refined Gallic excursions was likely disappointed Pilc is a way-

Green Dolphin Street a classy Chicago jazz bistro/supper club was the setting for a two-night stand of drummer T.S. Monk’s sextet. It was essentially the same grouping of players as their latest platter Higher Ground (Thelonious/Hyena), albeit with two substitutions: Nick Rolfe, piano, and Keith Newton, reeds, in place of Ray Gallon and Willie Williams, respectively; Winston Byrd, trumpet & flugelhorn, Bobby Porcelli, alto sax & flute; David Jackson, acoustic bass. In front of a near-pack

[For a description of the remarkable old, old-school rococo, slightly funky Chicago institution The Green Mill, please refer to my concert review of the Matt Wilson Quartet elsewhere on this very site.] The 40-something Greg Osby is one of the premier alto saxophone wizards of his generation, that generation of musicians whose commitment to jazz is unwavering, but open to the influences/inspirations of not only hard bop and the jazz avant-garde but to pre-bop styles and even [gasp] non-jazz musi