Jazz from WNMC

Drummer Brian Andres’s new album with the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel, San Francisco, not only takes its title from the band’s home base. The CD, to be released July 16 by the leader’s Bacalao Records imprint, also makes a persuasive case for the assertion that San Francisco has its own distinctive Latin jazz sound (the classic “San Francisco Tiene Su Propio Son” is included on the disc).

Eliane Elias, "I Thought About You (A Tribute to Chet Baker)" (Concord Jazz)

Brazilian pianist-singer Eliane Elias offers an inspired tribute to cool jazz legend Chet Baker, a major influence on bossa nova pioneers like Joao Gilberto. Unlike other recent tributes, which focused on slow ballads reflecting the sadness in Baker's music, Elias covers a wider spectrum of the trumpeter-singer's repertoire by including up-tempo and mid-tempo tunes with a certain swagger and seductiveness on "I Thought About You."

In the late '30s, Herman never rivaled band-leading clarinetists Benny Goodman andArtie Shaw. But then came that late blooming. In 1944, not long before the swing era collapsed, Herman put together a stupendous band known as his First Herd. It was popping with talent, starting with hotdog bassist Chubby Jackson, whose added fifth string made him sound sped-up. The brass included young trumpeter Sonny Berman with his antic bebop solos, as well as the lyrical but shouting trombonist Bill Harris.Igor Stravinsky wrote his "Ebony Concerto" for them. Herman famously said later, "We had no more right to play it than the man in the moon had."

It’s near perfect irony that the highly crafted cocktail came of age during the time when our country tried its hardest to get people not to drink. During the era of Prohibition, spanning the years 1920 through 1933, cocktails came into the height of fashion in the underground speakeasies and at private parties, when strong flavors were imparted to cover the harsh tinge of bootleggers’ bathtub booze. And, of course, these very kind of parties were the centerpiece of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. With a new film treatment of the iconic jazz age novel just out from director Baz Luhrmann, Gatsby and cocktails are once again in the public consciousness.

In Gatsby Cocktails: Classic Cocktails from The Jazz Age (Ryland Peters & Small, $9.95) we find sixty-some pages of beautiful illustrations, succinct history lessons, terrific quotes from The Great Gatsby, as well as a solid list of timeless recipes for truly delightful drinks.

Chucho Valdes reaffirms his status as one of jazz piano's great virtuosos with this new project, writes John Fordham. Chucho Valdes, Cuba's most famous jazzmusician, has rebalanced the repertoire of his Afro-Cuban Messengers on Border-Free, mixing its American-jazz agenda (the group's name deliberately references both Valdes' roots and the late Art Blakey's classic soul-bop Jazz Messengers group) with more extended Latin-American input, and some Native American and Andalusian connections, too.

Jazz icon Miles Davis may be remembered as a trumpet-wielding master by most, but a new exhibition reveals his finesse with an entirely different set of instruments: pen and paper, brush and canvas.

“Miles Davis: The Art of Cool” opens today at the Napa Valley Museum in Yountville, Calif., showcasing 35 of the legend's original sketches and paintings.

At first you may be skeptical of Isaiah Richardson Jr. He doesn’t look like somebody who would be playing Hava Nagila for passengers waiting for their train in the subway. Firstly, he seems too young,  and secondly, he’s a black kid from the Bronx, dressed sharply, derby hat and all. But when upon meeting Isaiah, the 32-year-old ticked off “Hevenu Shalom Aleichem,” “Bashana Haba’ah,” and “Zum Gali Gali” as some of his favorite songs to play passing crowds, I knew he was serious about his Jewish music.

In 1961 and 1965, singer-songwriter and pianist Blossom Dearie returned to Paris on tour. She had first lived there from 1952 to '57—when she sang, played and recorded with the vocal group Les Blue Stars.

Louis Armstrong singing spiritual-jazz anthem "The Creator Has a Masterplan" (and sounding great) is one of the more bizarre experiences on this neat compendium of black consciousness from the vaults of Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label.