Bill Charlap & Wynton Marsalis

“Bill Charlap has masterful technique and a stylistic range that encompasses rollicking stride piano, bebop virtuosity and harmonically opulent modernism.

The most famous musician in contemporary jazz, Wynton Marsalis made a major impact almost from the start. In 1997, Marsalis' marathon Blood on the Fields (which was released as a three-CD set) became the first jazz-based work to win a Pulitzer Prize.

“The pianist Kenny Barron has a brisk but unostentatious technique and a deceptively casual way with a phrase. He conveys a number of things clearly in his playing; what comes across over all is the quiet hum of effortless erudition. Within his playing you can hear a digest of mainstream jazz piano traditions, with bebop as the root. You can also hear the measured tension of an expert nudging himself toward a challenge.

“Saxophonist Dayna Stephens is refreshing in his resistance to flash and fanciness. He often plays slowly, preferring to tread a reflective and soberly considered path rather than shoot helter-skelter through the chord changes and more oblique scale choices in order to impress...Stephens’ tone on tenor is a thing of beauty, relatively free of vibrato, and with lovely moulding of notes.