Jazz

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews a remastering of trumpeter Lee Morgan's 1956 Lee Morgan, Volume 2: Sextet.

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews Quartet, a live performance from the McCoy Tyner Quartet, featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Christian McBride and drummer Jeff "Tain Watts.

The album, recorded on New Year's Eve 2006, leads off a new series of recordings from McCoy Tyner, and is the first recording on the new McCoy Tyner Music label.

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews two new CD reissues originally recorded in the fall of 1958.

Everybody Digs Bill Evans, featuring the legendary jazz pianist, includes a track left off the original issue of the recording.

We Three, featuring the Tennessee-born pianist Phineas Newborn, showcases his phenomenal technique alongside the contributions of drummer Roy Haynes and bassman Paul Chambers.

Saxophonist Harry Allen and singer-instrumentalist Eddie Erickson are just two of the performers on a new CD, The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet Perform Music From 'Guys and Dolls'. Erickson, who's best known as a guitarist, is featured on the disc as a vocalist, singing Frank Loesser's tunes alongside Rebecca Kilgore.

Max Roach, the pioneering jazz drummer and bebop innovator, died this week at age 83. Roach was considered the greatest drummer of all time by his peers. He played with Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk and Miles Davis. "Max was one of the founders and original members of the A-Team of bebop," said musician Quincy Jones. "Outside of losing a giant and an innovator, I've lost a great, great friend. Thank God he left a piece of his soul on his recordings so that we'll always have a part of him with us." Roach spoke to Terry Gross on June 25, 1987.

Fresh Air's jazz critic reviews a new reissue of Folk Songs for Far Out Folk, an obscure but iconic 1958 album created by jazz cellist Fred Katz — a student of classical giant Pablo Casals and a player in Chico Hamilton's legendary '50s quintet.

Chu Berry, otherwise known as Leon Berry, was a tenor saxophonist who backed singers like Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey in the 1930s, and jammed with Fletcher Henderson's and Cab Calloway's bands. He died in 1941, at the age of 33, in a car accident.

Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a sprawling limited-edition box set from Mosaic, titled Classic Chu Berry Columbia and Victor Sessions.

In April of this year, just a month before the death of New Orleans jazz clarinetist Alvin Batiste, the Marsalis Music label celebrated him with one of its "Honors" discs. The recording — Batiste's first in more than a decade — paired the pioneering modern jazzman with younger musicians, including two of his students. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead has a review.

Pilgrimage is the posthumously issued recording from tenor sax player Michael Brecker, who died earlier this year due to leukemia. The album features jazz greats Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny.

The new album 3 showcases Lafayette Gilchrist's maximalist jazz piano in a trio setting rather than with his seven-piece New Volcanoes band. Even in the more intimate arrangement, Gilchrist isn't afraid to make the box shout; this is jazz from artists influenced by everything from hip-hop to the D.C. area's distinctive go-go sound.