A two-day event in May called “The Music of Jelly Roll Morton” will feature Marcus Roberts performing favorites from the Morton legacy as part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center series in the Rose Theater.

Paul Simon will by joined by Wynton Marsalis for a trio of shows beginning with Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 2012 annual gala concert on April 18th. Two public shows will follow on April 19-20, also at the Rose Theater in New York City.

After a desultory, red-light district blast of horns, the Wynton Marsalis-led Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra settles into this funereal rhythm, swaying from side to side as Eric Clapton rips off a few blues-simmered, heartfelt asides. If you hadn’t checked the liner notes, the song itself — a signature moment for the guitarist as a member of Derek and the [...]

In a way, Christian McBride has been working on this big-band project all along. The talented jazz bassist’s interest in this format began almost 20 years ago

The lyrics have changed over these many years, but the mythical journey of Stagger Lee — “that bad man, oh, cru-el Stagolee” who shot a card-playing companion over a five-dollar Stetson hat — remains this talismanic tale.

If, during the opening strains of your DVD copy of “Malcolm X,” you stop eating popcorn mid-munch, that’s just fine with trumpeter Terence Blanchard. His original score for the 1991 Spike Lee film was designed to be anything but background music.

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis continue a stirringly offbeat musical dialogue begun with their 2008 release Two Men with the Blues, this time focusing on the music of Ray Charles.

by Nick DeRiso We’ve already offered a tip of the hat to “Two Men With the Blues,” Wynton Marsalis’ new recording with Willie Nelson — an offbeat, stirring collaboration that crossed genres and, hopefully, changed minds about the walls we’ve put up inside the open spaces of our music. Eagle Rock Entertainment subsequently offered this terrific multi-media companion piece called [...]

by Pico The Quickies columns have been settling into a theme of late, a theme of pimping obscure jazzers, especially whack jazzers. Hey, I can do nothing but that for years on end, but then I’d be skipping over some albums worthy of salute that come the more mainstream side of music. By “mainstream,” I don’t mean I’m going to [...]

by Nick DeRiso While it doesn’t have the cohesiveness of 1992′s “Portraits of Ellington,” this makes its own kind of statement. The playlist is an evocative pairing of older, traditional big-band selections by composers like Billy Strayhorn, with more modern tunes from Miles, Monk and Coltrane. In that way, the CD nearly mirrors the band’s own makeup.