Gary Fukushima

The young saxophonist from Santiago Chile won the 2013 Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition, becoming the first female instrumentalist ever to win the prestigious award. No one could be more deserving, as Aldana is a complete musician with an eloquent facility and wisdom of note choices rooted in both history and......

One year ago, trumpeter Daniel Rosenboom decided to do something crazy and founded a record label to support the growing number of musicians who prefer to be called “creative improvisers” rather than “jazz musicians.” They are not anti-jazz; it’s just traditional jazz enthusiasts might be anti-them. Today, Rosenboom is at......

Mancini, L.A.'s resident jazz malleter (i.e. player of vibraphone and marimba), recently teamed up with NYC organist Charette to record Mancini's new album, Impulse. It's a mix of feel-good jazz-pop and ball-busting bebop virtuosity. Charette, a practitioner of martial arts, needs those reflexes to deflect a relentless barrage of good......

Watching her sing gives one the sense of an other-worldly presence. Impeccable pitch, flawless rhythm and a delightful whimsy executed with deadly seriousness. She has maintained her youthful countenance, enhanced by wisdom from two decades in the spotlight. Tierney Sutton at times seems less like a jazz singer and more......

A lesser-known fact regarding Latin-jazz players is many of them prefer to play straight-ahead bebop, given the choice. At least that's what motivated drummer Ignacio Berroa to flee his native Cuba for New York, where he joined the quartet of Dizzy Gillespie, the godfather of Afro-Cuban music. Berroa himself has......