“The style is modern mainstream jazz, a combination of post-bop, modal and Latin elements, of which Kenny Barron is among today’s reigning masters. In fact, he helped invent it, 40-odd years ago, by simply absorbing the sounds in the air at the time. Now, a pianist, composer and bandleader of apparently infinite resource and ingenuity, he records albums as close to perfection as anyone could wish. Lately they have tended to be piano trios, but this sleek new quintet sounds full of promise.”

“Among the dozen or so most admired pianists in jazz today, Kenny Barron strikes me as the one who wears his mastery most comfortably. From a languid piece such as Dreams, to Thelonious Monk’s fiendishly tricky Shuffle-Boil, there’s a gentle firmness to his playing. In some mysterious way he makes the piano sound bigger too. Bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake follow every move with seamless subtlety.”

“There are moments, in the tumble of a typical improvisation, when the saxophonist Chris Potter seems to be embarked on a hero’s journey. With his strong, focused tone and top-to-bottom proficiency on the horn, he brings a robust physical presence to his playing and an onward-driving sense of purpose. His deployment of notes, parceled into staccato bursts or gracefully arcing phrases, suggests a split-second calculation of risk and reward. He works with an intuitive logic, venturing far from a theme and only gradually returning there, all the while responding to the changing conditions set by his band.”

“There are moments, in the tumble of a typical improvisation, when the saxophonist Chris Potter seems to be embarked on a hero’s journey. With his strong, focused tone and top-to-bottom proficiency on the horn, he brings a robust physical presence to his playing and an onward-driving sense of purpose. His deployment of notes, parceled into staccato bursts or gracefully arcing phrases, suggests a split-second calculation of risk and reward. He works with an intuitive logic, venturing far from a theme and only gradually returning there, all the while responding to the changing conditions set by his band.”

“In the quest to describe the music of Fred Hersch in a word — a preposterous task, but not a pointless one — you could do a lot worse than “refinement.” Mr. Hersch is a pianist of cultivated taste and erudition; he’s also the sort of jazz musician who brings a lissome elegance to his playing, disinclined to accentuate the effort behind it all. But there’s another definition of refinement that has to do with painstaking progress, the incremental stretch toward an elusive ideal.
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“Three well-known instrumentalists are building a new band called Steel House. The foundations of this house are deep and strong, the roof sturdy. Inside is one big, light-filled room occupied by the three leaders: Edward Simon on piano, Scott Colley on acoustic bass, and Brian Blade on drums. Each man is a world-class jazz player with his own robust composing, recording, and performing career. Since meeting in New York in the early 1990s, they have shared stages and studios, playing many different styles of music together. They decided to form (build) Steel House to create a dedicated place for their own musical explorations. The music of Steel House embraces both silence, and emerging from that stillness, conversation. The communication among Simon, Colley, and Blade stays nimble, focused on moment-to-moment interaction. Musical structure is minimal, poetic, and full of purpose. Walls of genre, category, and style are torn down. Light and space abound. We can hear them down the street now, Simon, Colley, and Blade building their Steel House. The music is infectious. It is everything you wanted – spirited and serious, caring and carefree.”

“Connecting older generations of musicians to younger musicians and audiences is one of Cohen’s major projects, and it has come to fruition on his Master Legacy Series Albums — the first of which was a collaboration with Jimmy Cobb, who played drums on Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” and the second with Ron Carter, the most recorded jazz bassist in history. ”

“The group has a bedrock relationship with groove, but also a genius for permutation: Mr. Guiliana chops up the beat in deft, destabilizing ways, and Mr. Lindner, favoring a Wurlitzer electric piano with pedal effects, brings welcome grit and woozy atmosphere.

Mr. McCaslin seems to have direct access to emotional expression in his playing, as if it were a valve he could open at will. He’s exceptionally sure-footed with his phrasing, almost never caught off balance, but he knows how to convey risk or fury through the compressed force of his tone.”

“One of the leading drummers of his generation, Billy Hart continues to make jazz history with his quartet. Working with the phenomenally creative and talented pianist Ethan Iverson, saxophonist Mark Turner, and bassist Ben Street, Hart constantly seeks new territory, pushing the boundaries of post-bop and straight-ahead, of free jazz and composition, all the while embracing beauty and soulful communication. Turner’s rich, gorgeous tenor and Iverson’s exquisite technique combine to create a nearly infinite variety of textures and colors. Street and Hart have an uncanny connection that enables them to move effortlessly between swinging, tight grooves and sonic landscapes.

Hart made an indelible mark on the jazz world in the ’60s and ’70s with his work with such jazz legends as Jimmy Smith, Wes Montgomery, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Eddie Harris, Marian McPartland, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock, and Miles Davis. Less known is his earlier work with soul artists Otis Redding and Sam and Dave.”