Mark Dresser

Members of the much remembered classic quartet of Anthony Braxton and bandleaders in their own right, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway are the first names we consider when asked to mention the best improvisers on their respective instruments, the double bass and the drum kit.

Just mentioning the members of the Herb Robertson NY Allstars makes you want to hear this new double album. The project is, as you might guess from the name, under the leadership of the trumpeter known for using the mutes as complementary instruments and megaphones as electronic processors: Herb Robertson.

New York City's annual Vision Festival is quickly becoming one of this country's most prestigious showcases for free, creative, and experimental jazz music. To raise funding for the event, organizers have issued this limited edition two-CD set featuring the greatest hits of the 1997 festival.

A new Herb Robertson release is always cause for celebration, at least in my household. There’s always that anticipation to see what he’s done this time.

Percussionist and composer Billy Fox is a specialist in combining worlds that live apart. His “Uncle Wiggly Suite” is a mix of atonal music, Sixties modal jazz, New Orleans brass bands, Cuban rhythms, Pakistani ghazals, and much more (one of the tracks includes a shamisen, a traditional string Japanese instrument), and he usually combines composition, arrangement and improvisation.

Just mentioning the members of the Herb Robertson NY Allstars makes you want to hear this new double album. The project is, as you might guess from the name, under the leadership of the trumpeter known for using the mutes as complementary instruments and megaphones as electronic processors: Herb Robertson.

Radif Suite is an important new recording from trumpeter Amir ElSaffar and tenor saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh. The CD is a cross-cultural exchange between the Iraqi maqam, the Persian dastgah, and American jazz.