As anyone that’s closely followed the fertile NYC jazz scene—especially the “sub-scene” affectionately referred to as the “Downtown sound”—over the past five to 15 years or so knows, there’s a LOT of (relatively) young creative talent thriving there. “So what,” snorts your Inner Monologue, “New York is always awash in burgeoning talents—that’s why it’s the Big Apple.” True, but I refer to the lads and lasses of more recent generations, players and singers that happily and unashamedly embrace influences well beyond jazz and the Great American Songbook. Oh, many of the can play standards and the bebop changes with the best of them—i...

Back-when, there was a TV preview-trailer for the science-fiction movie The Blob (the original, not the 1980s remake) that scared the living [fill in blank] out of me. “The monster that can’t be killed,” screamed the icy voice-over. The Blob was this formless, massive organism that basically absorbed anything living that it touched, growing ever larger in the process. Around the same time (we're talking late 1950s), the scary monsters of free jazz and rock & roll were threatening the world,

Salvatore Bonafede is a jazz pianist born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1962. If you’ll pardon the reference to Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, he made his bones at the Berklee School of Music, and with bosses Jerry Bergonzi, Joe Lovano, Judi Silvano, the late Lester Bowie, and John Scofield. He is of the generation(s) of jazz players from whom influences beyond jazz are not only not verboten, but to be relished and nurtured. To wit, Bonafede covers two slightly-off-the-beaten-trail Beatles' songs (w

Salvatore Bonafede is a jazz pianist born in Palermo, Sicily, in 1962. If you’ll pardon the reference to Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, he made his bones at …

There hasn’t been a great deal of "crossover" between the spheres of jazz and country music. Charlie Parker was a fan of country music, and is reputed to have sat in wit…