Billy Strayhorn

Wynton Marsalis describes the big jazz band as "the American orchestra." It's an intriguing and, in many ways, definitive identification of the instrumental collective that has been a foundation ensemble of American jazz and popular music for more than 80...

LUSH LIFE, by Richard Price. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 455 pp., $26. A mugging gone violently wrong is at the center of Richard Price's new novel, "Lush Life." Scraping the spick-and-span surface of the "new" New York to get at the grit beneath, Price...

By Wendy Smith To those who think rock 'n' roll created the postwar generation gap, David Hajdu says: Think again. " Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry added the soundtrack to a scene created in comic books," he declares in his intelligent, entertaining...

Politics have provided gay Americans like myself with no end of schadenfreude in recent years, what with the antics of Mark Foley, Larry Craig and other I'm-not-gay Republicans. But last weekend, a competing Democratic farce debuted: Barack Obama's...

Chrisette Michele is still cutting her teeth -- literally. In June, the 24-year-old singer's wisdom teeth were hurting so much she was praying for relief. "Oh, my God, they were killing me," Michele recalled. "It was definitely interfering with my...

3½ stars (out of 4) Woody Allen's films may have fallen on hard times critically in recent years, but he remains one of the great movie comedy creators. He can still crack a fine joke, spin a witty tale. In "Melinda and Melinda," Allen gives us at...

The last time that the musicians of Astral Project -- New Orleans' greatest contemporary jazz band -- performed together, Hurricane Katrina hadn't yet smashed against the Gulf Coast. So, the band's return to the stage over the weekend, at the Green...

Joe Henderson, a tenor saxophonist known for his inventive improvisation and lyrical contemporary jazz style who was late to achieve the widespread fame he had long deserved, has died at age 64. Henderson, who earned three Grammys in the early 1990s when...

++++++++++++++++++++ || Top 10 of 2002: - Greg Kot's rock picks - Howard Reich's jazz picks - John von Rhein's classical picks || ++++++++++++++++++++ This year was important not only for visionary recordings by Wynton Marsalis and Dave Holland...

Most of the legends of big-band drumming aren't among us anymore, but at least one just keeps on swinging. And though his playing is more economical than in earlier days, Louie Bellson still says more with a few well-placed brushstrokes than younger...

At age 88, Chicagoan Franz Jackson isn't merely a sublimely creative jazz musician, he's an invaluable link to an earlier era in the music's history. So when Jackson takes the stage, as he did over the weekend at the Green Mill Jazz Club, he offers...

Most American cities lack a first-rate jazz repertory orchestra, but Chicago has at least three. Yet among these, one stands out for the sheer breadth of its repertoire, which extends well beyond the stylistic confines of jazz. Though the New Black...