North Carolina native Woody Shaw, Jr. is today considered to be the last major innovator in the lineage of 20th-century trumpet that began…

Overshadowed throughout his life by his friends Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope was a talented pianist and composer whose life was…

Gerald Wilson is an unusually skillful, imaginative, and charismatic bandleader. His arrangements have distinctive, often complex voicings and harmonies, rooted in swing and bop, yet…

The premier blues shouter of the postwar era, Big Joe Turner’s roar could rattle the very foundation of any gin joint he sang…

Vibraphonist/percussionist Stefon Harris originally planned to pursue his musical ambitions as a member of the New York Philharmonic, but his first exposure to…

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Charles and Addie Parker. Parker…

Clark Terry’s career in jazz spans more than seventy years. He is a world-class trumpeter, flugelhornist, educator, composer, writer, trumpet/flugelhorn designer, teacher and…

Don Pullen was born on December 25, 1941, and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. Growing up in a musical family, he learned the piano…

“Bobby Sanabria is equally adept at the swinging big band sounds of drummers Buddy Rich and Louis Bellson along with another boyhood hero, fusion…

One of the leading exponents of straight-ahead jazz guitar, Kenny Burrell is a highly influential artist whose understated and melodic style, grounded in…