The JAZZ Story

Wynton's quintet until he joined with rock icon Sting's band for a year. He

has since led his own straight-ahead jazz quartet. As his replacement with

Blakey, Wynton recommended fellow New Orleanian Terence Blanchard

(b. 1962), who later formed a group with altoist Donald Harrison also

from New Orleans, as co-leader.

Many other gifted players have emerged during the present decade -- too

many to list here. Many have affirmed their roots in bebop, and some have

reached even further back to mainstream swing (such as tenorist Scott

Hamilton (b. 1954), and trumpeter Warren Vache, Jr. [b. 1951]), but

almost all, even when choosing experimentation and innovation, operate

within the established language of jazz. As in the other arts, Jazz seems to

have arrived at a postmodern stage.

We ought not to overlook the increasingly important role being played by

women instrumentalists, among them Carla Bley, JoAnne Brackeen, Jane

Ira Bloom, Amina Claudine Myers, Emely Remler and Janice Robinson.

The durability of the Jazz tradition has been symbolically affirmed by two

events: the Academy Award nomination of Dexter Gordon, the seminal

bebop tenor saxophonist, for his leading role in the film Round Midnight,

and the widely acclaimed appearances of Benny Carter, approaching his

90th birthday, at the helm of the American Jazz Orchestra (an ensemble

formed in 1986 to perform the best in Jazz, past and present) both as a

player and composer.

And one may also take heart at the qualitative as well as quantitative

growth of Jazz education in this country, and the active involvement of so

many fine performing artist in this process.