Mirror features beautiful, transformed versions of favorites including both Lloyd originals and tunes the saxophonist has made his own over the years. There is a pair of Thelonious Monk tunes, “Ruby, My Dear” and “Monk’s Mood,” as well as hymns and traditionals including “Go Down Moses,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “The Water is Wide.” Lloyd covers Brian Wilson’s “Caroline, No” (the saxophonist guested on several Beach Boys albums in the ’70s) and plays a lovely version of the standard “I Fall In Love Too Easily.” Lloyd originals include “Desolation Sound,” “Mirror,” “Tagi” (which includes a Bhagavad Gita-inspired spoken-word meditation by Lloyd) and “Being and Becoming.”

None of Lloyd’s quartet mates had yet been born when the saxman made his breakthrough with “Forest Flower” in 1967. Moran recalls that his father encouraged him to listen to Forest Flower when he was just starting to check out jazz, and the album was part of the soundtrack of his childhood.

“Charles approaches the music with such openness,” Moran said recently. “I like playing with leaders who let you bring what you’ve got to the table, and interpret the music however you’d like. Charles is a great promoter of free-thinking music, and letting it develop on the spot.”

The release of Mirror will coincide with a five-city North American tour. The band will tour again next year. Here are dates presently scheduled:

September 22 and 23, Yoshi’s, Oakland, California
September 24, Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara, California
September 25, Nate Holden Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles, California
September 30, The Dakota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
October 2, Quebec City Jazz Festival, Quebec City, Canada

January 19, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
January 21 and 22, The Regattabar, Boston, Massachusetts
January 23, The Flynn Center, Burlington, Vermont
January 26, U Mass, Amherst, Massachusetts
January 28, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
January 29, Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall, New York, New York
January 30, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Photo: left to right: Reuben Rogers, Charles Lloyd, Jason Moran, Eric Harland
Photo credit: D. Darr

“It’s so exciting and flattering and fun when I get asked to sing with somebody that I admire,” says Jones. “It takes you a little bit out of your comfort zone when you’re doing something with another artist. You don’t know what to expect — it’s kind of like being a little kid and having a play date.”

The tracks on …Featuring span her entire career, from one of her earliest recording sessions (a version of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” with guitarist Charlie Hunter in 2001) to her most recent performance, a song called “Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John” that she cut with Belle and Sebastian, which will also appear on their new album. The result serves as a kind of parallel history to her own four albums, which have sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

These collaborations reveal Jones’ musical versatility, from jazz to country to hip-hop to rock. Three of the songs on …Featuring originally appeared on records that won Grammy awards for “Album of the Year” (Ray Charles’ Genius Loves Company, Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters, and OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below), and several others were also nominated for Grammys. The album also includes recordings by some of Jones’ own bands and side projects (The Little Willies and El Madmo), and performances with artists that she’s toured with including M. Ward, Sasha Dobson, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Songs on …Featuring range from classics recorded by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and Roy Orbison to new material by Ryan Adams and Q-Tip.

“A lot of the people on this record are people I’ve worshiped since I was a kid, and some of them are younger and more my contemporaries,” says Jones. “Even though the musicians are so varied, the vibe of the songs makes sense when we put them all together.”

Prima’s was the 2,413th star on the Walk of Fame. The presentation ceremony and Prima concert kicked off “Walk the Walk,” a community event sponsored by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in celebration of the Walk’s 50th anniversary.

Over the past five years, Louis Prima Jr., a gifted musician and master of many instruments, has been keeping his father’s flame burning with a hard-swinging show reminiscent of his father’s. (As did his father, Louis Jr. also named his band, featuring singer Sarah Spiegel, the Witnesses.) To date, the group has played at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Hard Rock Café in Las Vegas, the Cicade Club in L.A., and other venues.

For more information on Louis Jr. and Sr., go to www.louisprimajr.com and www.louisprima.com. And check out the November digital issue of JAZZIZ (www.jazziz.com), which will feature more coverage of the Prima boys.

“We’ve always been big Beatles fans,” says the group’s guitarist, Eric Krasno, speaking for himself and the band’s other two members, brothers Neal and Alan Evans, on keyboards and drums, respectively. Krasno had been working on an arrangement of the Fab Four’s “Get Back” when the Beatles entire catalogue was reissued last year to great fanfare. Soon those discs were on heavy rotation in the group’s van while on tour. Subsequently Soulive played an all-Beatles set at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. last Halloween. The fun they had doing that show inspired them to record a full disc Beatles tracks. “We thought about doing all of Rubber Soul,” Krasno recalls, “but that band has so many great tunes. We picked the ones that lent themselves well to our sound, and others where we could add the Soulive flavor.”

So what appears on Rubber Soulive are all-instrumental renditions of two tracks from Rubber Soul (“Drive My Car” and “In My Life”) augmented by nine other Beatles’ works, including “Taxman,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Come Together,” “Day Tripper” and George Harrison’s “Something” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” All of the tracks are rendered in classic ’60’s-era organ-trio funky fashion. Booker T. and the M.G.’s — who released their own instrumental tribute to the Beatles, McLemore Avenue, in 1970 — would no doubt give this release their wholehearted stamp of approval.

For more information, go to www.soulive.com and www.royalfamilyrecords.com.

It’s been a fabulous, breakout year for the New Orleans trombonist, who calls the music he plays “supafunkrock.” His Verve Forecast debut, Backatown, entered the Contemporary Jazz Album chart at No.1, and went on to spend nine weeks there before being toppled by Herbie Hancock’s new release The Imagine Project. Beyond big success with Backatown, Shorty and his band have been headlining shows and appearing at festivals across the United States in recent months. (On consecutive days, they appeared at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles as part of the Playboy Jazz Festival, and at the massive Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.) They recently appeared on Late Night With David Letterman; their song “Hurricane Season” can be heard weekly on MTV’s “The Real World: New Orleans” as the opening title song; and Shorty’s played himself on four episodes of HBO’s Emmy-nominated “Treme.” More recently, Shorty and Orleans Avenue made their Japanese debut last weekend at the Fuji Rock Festival, and this month they’ll play their first shows in Brazil. On October 23, while the band is touring Europe, Austin City Limits will air a recent Shorty concert that was highlighted by special guest Ivan Neville.

For more information, including tour dates, go to www.tromboneshorty.com.

Oct. 15   Bournemouth, BIC
Oct. 16   Brighton, Brighton Centre
Oct. 17   Birmingham, Symphony Hall
Oct. 19   Preston, Guildhall
Oct. 20   Glasgow, Clyde Auditorium

Trombone Shorty on the Web: http://www.tromboneshorty.com