"To me jazz is like a sponge of culture, you squeeze it out and you get new jazz," singer/songwriter Raya Yarbrough tells me during our recent conversation, "I disagree with people when they say that jazz needs to be preserved and frozen in (time). I think that dead things need to be preserved, and jazz is not dead, it is very alive. Jazz is changing because it is meant to change. People didn’t think that bebop would ever work and it did. Every step of the way, every time that jazz has morphed, …

"I think that we can pull from all of our lives’ experiences and our music. That’s where this is going to come from. It is going to be seasoned. It is going to be like a fine bottle of wine. We are going to uncork it and let it breathe," says one of the world’s premier smooth jazz trumpeters Greg Adams, as he and R&B singer, Lenny Williams, both former members of Tower Of Power, sat in with me for a conversation about their new band East Bay Soul. East Bay Soul is to smooth jazz m …

Jazz vocalist and composer Carolyn Leonhart has always been surrounded by gifted artists. Her father Jay Leonhart is a highly respected acoustic double bass player, her mother was a talented singer, who left a promising professional career to focus on raising her family, and her husband Wayne Escoffery, besides being a very talented tenor saxophonist, is considered to be one of jazz music’s most insightful composers and arrangers. In addition, a few months ago Leonhart came off of an extensiv …

"I am interested in singing songs that move me, in a way that moves people," says Sophie Milman, a twenty-four year old jazz singer from Toronto, Canada, whose current CD Make Someone Happy, soared to the # 4 spot on Billboard’s jazz charts. With emotionally deep, evocative vocals, combined with poise and confidence that suggests a much more seasoned artist, Sophie Milman has tantalized North American audiences, with songs such as producer Steve Mackinnon’s "Something In …

Lauren White is a name that you should probably commit to memory, because the twenty-one year old jazz singer from Dallas, Texas, possesses an abundance of talent, a great attitude, and is one of the most polite people you will ever talk to, qualities which will serve her well in the music industry. Earlier this year White released her debut CD, At Last, an album that has three original tunes, several standards that were popular, long before she was born, and tunes by more modern …