In October, a new George Benson album will come out. Its title is Guitar Man, which sounds sort of like a promise that there’s plenty of pickin’ and strummin’ in store. We’ll see. For now, we’re left with a press release that tells us the following: There’ll be 12 songs, [...]

Since the release of his Grammy-nominated 2010 release Backatown, Trombone Shorty and his six-piece band, Orleans Avenue, have been touring the world, playing their own progressive brand of New Orleans funk and growing increasingly popular by the day. Popularity, of course, is not a state to which most trombonists aspire, [...]

Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, has just released its second round of “The Complete Albums Collections,” and among the fresh offerings are a couple noteworthy items for jazz fans. No, we’re not talking about the newly designed box sets documenting the work of the rock band [...]

In addition to having recorded more than 30 albums under his own name, jazz pianist and composer Fred Hersch has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship. Among many of his jazz-playing peers, he is both influential and revered. As contemporary jazz pianists go, it’d [...]

Trumpeter Randy Brecker’s latest release, The Jazz Ballad Song Book (Half Note Records), hit retail outlets, online and off, on July 25. The disc, recorded in Copenhagen in January 2010, is a collaboration with the Danish Radio Big Band and the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. As the album’s title largely [...]

With the August 30 release of Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook (Marsalis Music), saxophonist Miguel Zenón forges ahead with the work  he began in earnest on his 2009 disc Esta Plena. Which is to say that Alma Adentro further explores the music of Zenón’s Puerto Rican homeland. The album [...]