Al Jarreau owns one of the more recognizable voices in all of popular music. He swings, he swoons, he can reach the highest of levels and then dive to deepest depths, and this is all in the same song. Jarreau scats and becomes his own one man band capable of backing up the best jazz has to offer and as a soloist, he is outstanding in his field, bar none. This is pretty good for someone whose early training was not really in the direction of music. Jarreau holds a BS in psy …

When you first see his face on the cover of his latest CD release Street Scene, Larry Vuckovich looks like your grandfather; the grey hair sticking out from under the black beret, the trench coat tied at his waist, the knowing world weary look on his face. He sort of looks like one of those tough guys in the old nineteen forties movies, kind of like the guy Humphrey Bogart would run into, or maybe Cagney or maybe even George Raft. The album cover is straight out …

On a warm summer evening in Havana, Cuba, a young man stands outside a concert hall talking with some friends. He is ecstatic and he is telling this friends that his life can end now and he will go peacefully because he has seen the great Dizzy Gillespie perform. Performances such as this are a rare thing in Havana and this one has left a very strong impression on the young man. Little did he know at the time that a short four years later, this same young man would get to& …

It is very difficult to try and place Oscar Castro-Neves in any one category, but the nice thing about it is you don't have to. Guitarist, composer, arranger, singer and producer, Castro-Neves fits in all places all at once. This is very readily on display on his new recording All One on Mack Avenue records. When I spoke to him recently, he said that at first he started out with a long list of songs to choose from and that he slowly made his way through the list and mana …

On the new album, "Learn to Smile Again," from the Susie Arioli band, there is a sound--a sound that you do not usually hear on recordings. It's faint, but there. What is it you ask? Perhaps it's something that should have been taken off the final product. The sound is breathing--Susie Arioli's breathing to be exact, and it's there because it's supposed to be. In fact, the band asked to have it left there. "There was a guy we had worked with on this recording that …