Last night I had the privilege of meeting bass player Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Jaydon Bean (as well as my teacher, Mark Nilan Jr.) at the Watermark on Main in Ventura. Let me tell you, it was quite the experience just watching the three musicians set up in such a tiny venue — a small space surrounded by already-inhabited tables — yet somehow it worked. I also believe that my heart did skip a beat when Nilan pulled out that lipstick-red keyboard — and the same goes for when he told me that Rastegar was the bass player for the jazz fusion band, Kneebody. It’s not usual for me to be that excited before the show starts — but in this case, I genuinely was.

But it was watching the three of them create this intense musical sphere right there in that busy restaurant — uninterrupted by bustling waiters and rowdy customers — that was probably the most mesmerizing part of the show. And it was even more astonishing to know that this crazy musical bond was created by three musicians that had not once played with one another — in fact, they’d just met only minutes before the gig.

I can’t describe their performance that night as anything else but organic. Organic in the sense that they rapidly caught each others’ idiosyncrasies as the pieces progressed — even the slightest bit of a catchy phrase was repeated and answered and echoed and turned through each player, as if their music was some living, growing, breathing being. I especially enjoyed this nonverbal exchange of ideas and the way Bean’s face lit up every single time something interesting was played (or perhaps he was smiling at the fact that I reveled in this so much).

Their set included Green Dolphin Street, the Beatles’ Blackbird, Someday My Prince Will Come, and my all-time favorite, Alice in Wonderland.

(left to right: Jaydon Bean, Kaveh Rastegar, me, Mark Nilan Jr.)

I also got a chance to talk a bit with Rastegar during their breaks and gained some pretty insightful advice on being a young and ambitious jazz musician. Probably the most valuable piece of advice he gave me was on working with other musicians — recognizing your place and position as a part of the group you are playing with is one of the most important parts of being a successful player. Also, like I’ve read and heard from many musicians, he noted that the most important part of being a musician in any situation is developing yourself into the best musician you can be. It sounds like a given here, but I’m beginning to notice that it’s very easy to get caught up in petty concerns — age, race, gender, equipment, length of study, money, personality issues, even placement or chair seating in a band — which hold the potential to lead you astray from this fundamental goal.

After talking to Rastegar, I now have an appointment at the CalArts library to go on a music-hunting spree, as well as a transcription bucket list nailed to my wall. Not to mention that I’m even more intent on continuing my Joseph Campbell-esque hero’s journey out on the East coast. As you read this I’m most likely staring dreamily into the pages of a college application in some deserted library as I begin the last summer before my senior year.

I’ll conclude this post with the video that introduced me to Kneebody:

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Brother Mister/Christian McBride and Inside Straight/Kind of Brown

I was at a neighbor’s house Sunday night for a light get-together and a hearty barbecue — the same neighbor, Richard, who was the first to toss some jazz classics in my direction. Throughout the night, several names were thrown about and excitedly discussed — Toots Thielemans, George Benson, and Rod Piazza, to name a few. But for some strange reason, every jazz-related discussion that Richard and I have always finds its way back to Bill Evans.

That night, Richard posed a simple but deep question: why do I like Bill Evans?

Although I’d like to say that I had some heavy monologue about my love for Evans ready on the spot, I’m going to admit that this question definitely took me by surprise. I’m pretty sure I babbled some unintelligible nonsense about the softness and vulnerability of his playing, about how anyone could connect his sensitive playing to his struggle of a life. It probably didn’t make much sense.

Richard probably doesn’t know this, but that question has been on my mind ever since I went to sleep that night. And finally, close to midnight, I’ve come to a conclusion:

Bill Evans and his playing represent one of my most treasured values: to be taken seriously. Evans’s playing is sensitive, subtle, beautiful, unique — but there’s one thing that it’s not: cute. However raw and personal Evans playing can get, it always invokes the same overwhelming feeling of respect from me (and other listeners, I’m sure) — it demands to be taken seriously. Despite the stories that I’ve read about Evans, and despite the fact that some of them are immensely tragic, one listen to Alice in Wonderland makes me forget it all. The fact that his playing allows me only to think of his playing — not his long, bony fingers or his solemn face or his grey life– is the reason why I enjoy listening to Bill Evans.

There’s only one other thing that’s on my mind while I listen to this: I want to get to the point where my playing — and every other aspect of my life — can be taken just as seriously as this.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Milestones/Bill Evans/Waltz for Debby

Being a teenage musician in a place like Los Angeles has got its perks. I’ve got access to the Hollywood Bowl, the Baked Potato, the Monterey Jazz Festival, and the California Institute of the Arts — not to mention access to thousands of musicians associated with LA-based music organizations. Nevertheless, it’s still exciting to meet those people that you only see in websites and magazines; the faces behind the names that show up on the songs that you play every day.

It was on the last Sunday of January that I met Antoinette Perry, the Senior Lecturer of Keyboard Studies at the University of Southern California, for a master class in a home of a quiet suburbian neighborhood. If you know anything about master classes, you’ll know that they can be absolutely frightening — in front of a large, judging audience the student has to perform a piece, knowing that in the next few minutes an intimidating master class instructor will be hovering over her shoulder, exposing tiny mistakes, insisting on minuscule nuances. It’s not one of the most pleasantly exciting things to do.

But my experience with Antoinette Perry was quite the opposite. To tell you the truth, the first thing I noticed about Perry — before her tall, lanky stature and her youthful smile — were her hands. I was nearly infatuated with them. Her fingers were bony, slender, delicate; they stroked the keys of the piano with the grace of a prima ballerina. I’ve constantly tried to justify playing piano with my short, stubby fingers by pulling up names like Thelonius Monk, insisting to myself that he probably didn’t have Rachmaninoff fingers either and could still play a killer B-flat blues — but Perry flat out dissolved those comforting thoughts. Even she noticed that my elbows aren’t even close to being perpendicular with my hands when I play, leaving me in an awkward angle above the piano keys — a realization that she quickly dismissed by hastily moving on to a different topic. It’s a pretty sensitive subject for a compulsively-obsessive pianist like me.

Still, she had fantastic critiques about my performance of Schubert’s Impromptu No. 2 in E-flat Major — everything from inner melodies that needed more emphasis to small fluctuations in pedaling to help me out with my E-flat major scale runs. And Perry was an exciting instructor — as she had me try out her tips with the Schubert, she’d flail her arms wildly in imaginary conducting, passionately singing along. She was definitely a great window into the music program at USC.

(P.S. I later won a $300 scholarship from the local Music Teacher’s Association of California playing the same piece!)

Just as exciting was a clinic with Don Menza, the composer of one of our currently most challenging pieces: Time Check. (Menza’s also the composer of the popular piece Groovin’ Hard.) “You can only play as good as you can play,” he told us in regards to being nervous before a performance, adding, “I talk about this with Sonny [Rollins] all the time.” He only ever took off his shades when he wanted to emphasize a crucial point — putting air through the horn; playing lines together; hitting the drumset with confidence. While Perry was a window into a prospective college, Menza was a window into the past — a place where jazz was a taboo gateway into violence and drugs and alcohol. It seemed like jazz had this fountain-of-youth effect on Menza — as he spoke, he moved his body energetically, visually showing us what he wanted us to do, throwing around in his speech the colloquialisms of a jazz kid from the sixties.

And then there was his saxophone. Before he arrived, we already knew that he’d written and played with Maynard Ferguson’s orchestra and Buddy Rich’s big band; we knew that he was an amazing tenor sax player. But the word amazing is used everywhere in nearly every circumstance imaginable — it can’t even come close to describe what came out of Menza’s horn.

On a concluding note, here’s what I’m failing in an attempt to describe in words:

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Roustabout/Simple Citizens/Me and Miss Lemona K

Now that winter break’s on its last legs, it’s time to look forward to a fresh new semester and a fresh new year. Here are some of my resolutions for 2010:

1. Read.

After setting down The Great Gatsby today, I realized that I haven’t picked up many jazz biographies since I started getting involved with jazz in my freshman year. Luckily, the same neighbor who’s been feeding me jazz albums every time I visit also let me borrow his copy of Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings — a biography written by Peter Pettinger chronicling the ups and downs of Bill Evans’ life and career.

I have to admit that I’m a tad bit reluctant to read it. Granted, learning more about Bill Evans won’t change how fantastic his music is — but I remember when I first watched Ray, a film detailing the life of jazz musician Ray Charles, I couldn’t listen to anything by Ray Charles for weeks. Yes, it’s a commonly accepted fact that movies like these often stretch the truth, but it didn’t really matter — my romanticized Ray Charles was gone forever. On the other hand, I don’t really have a romanticized Bill Evans — every time my neighbor hands me anything by Bill Evans it’s always accompanied by a somber expression and a “Man, this guy had a tough life.”

And of course, the book I’ve been itching to read: Cicily Janus’ The New Face of Jazz. I don’t know whether this excitement stems from the fact that Gordon Goodwin’s going to appear in it or the fact that I’ve been following Cicily Janus on Twitter since I first started The Jazz Post (there’s something strange about Twitter that makes jazz folks seem more accessible/three-dimensional, haha). It’s not going to be available until July 13th, but it’s available for pre-ordering here.

2. Listen.

I constantly tell myself that I don’t take advantage of the opportunities I have to listen to great jazz around here in Los Angeles — I do live right next to CalArts, which always hosts free/almost-free concerts. The only one of these I attended involved electric instruments and speakers pointed at each other to produce a painfully awesome “feedback” sound — needless to say, I was left deprived of my sense of hearing for several days. (Maybe this is why I haven’t gone back for a while.)

Anyhow, I did get a chance to listen to some life jazz a week or so ago while I was up in San Francisco at the Les Joulins Jazz Bistro. It was one of those great moments where I was looking around for a place to eat and I heard the lovely sounds of a jazz quartet emanating from this restaurant — it’s one of the nicest things to stumble upon.

That night we listened to the Charles Unger Quartet — their Latvian pianist (Eugene Pliner) even gave me some tips during their break.

3. Get Involved/Branch Out…Play!

Outside from the CAP program and my high school jazz band, I haven’t reached out to many other jazz programs. But I’ve already started to look for more — this coming January 17th I’ll be auditioning for the All-Southern California Jazz Band. Wish me luck!

Also, the composition class I took through the CAP program helped me out with the music theory aspect of jazz improvisation — although I can’t say for sure that improvisation makes complete sense to me yet, it’s definitely a lot less confusing. And I even got a bit of a piece done in the class. Here’s that piece — along with the CAP jazz class performance. As I’m sure you can tell, they’re both fantastic classes.

I’m also looking forward to telling you about our combo program at West Ranch High School very soon. :)

Have a fabulous new year!

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Galang (Trio Riot Version)/Vijay Iyer Trio/Historicity

Being involved in many music programs as a high school student has its perks, but sometimes I find myself diving head first into weekends like these:

1. Saturday, 7:30 am: The SAT.

There’s nothing much to say about this one except for the fact that it pretty much rendered me useless for the rest of the day.

2. Saturday, 2-4 pm: CAP @ CalArts

I’ll elaborate further on my experience with this program next week, when we’ll be having our last class. But in a nutshell, I’m taking two classes out of the ten or so offered: Theory II/Composition and Jazz Ensemble. I took the composition class in hopes that it would help me with improvisation — but I’ve learned so much more than just that. I’d tried composing before, but this is the first time I’ve actually successfully started and finished a piece — I wrote it based on some of the ii-V7-I chords  in the Alice in Wonderland performed by Bill Evans (it’s my all-time favorite jazz ballad). On the other hand, I’ve taken this Jazz Ensemble class for about a year and a half with several different teachers (including Jon Armstrong) — this year, it’s James Lewis and Tina Raymond.

Currently we’re rehearsing Lady Bird, Alice in Wonderland, and a B-flat blues piece we wrote as a class. But sometimes James takes the liberty of sitting us down and teaching us “life lessons;” he’ll give us a short speech about how to be better musicians and better people in general — it’s often a humorously serious experience. This week it was about the importance of humility — in James’s opinion, one of the most important requirements of being a musician is having a sense of humility: “there’s no ‘there’ in music,” he says, “you’re never ‘there’…never think more of yourself than that.”

3. Saturday, 6:30 pm: SCVYO Concert @ COC Performing Arts Center

I’ve been involved with the SCVYO program for a little less than three years — I’m a firm believer in keeping a balance between jazz and classical (especially when I listen to someone like Hiromi Uehara). I got to play along with the orchestra in a Corelli double concerto. There’s definitely something comforting about having all the notes in front of you after being in front of play-what-sounds-right chord changes every morning. And there’s this sense of security in the fact that each orchestra part is like a cell of a living, breathing organism — each part isn’t much without the other.

4. Sunday, 9:30 am: West Ranch HS Jazz Band Concert @ Westfield Valencia Mall

That picture at the beginning of this post? Yup, I’m standing right next to Jeff Babko — he’s my jazz band director’s (Robert Babko) son. Hopefully my standing next to him allowed some of his amazing piano skills to rub off on me; I’m really depending on it. :)

Remember that combo I was talking about earlier? We finally got to perform for the first time — given that we only had one rehearsal to get Santa Claus is Coming to Town together, I think we did a pretty great job. The combo includes me on piano, Omer Benyamin on the tenor sax, Josef Staley on trombone, Diego Kiner on drums, and Brandon Canada on bass. (Watch it below! My solo starts 1:30.)

As always, thanks to Mr. Babko and everyone in the jazz band — they’re all the reason that I love jazz this much.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Give Me The Proof/Tower of Power/Urban Renewal

I recently sent in a self-recording for an All-California Jazz Band audition (check it out at CBDA.org) — it was the first time I’d ever done a recording for anything to do with jazz. Like any good musician, I waited until the weekend before the audition tapes were due to begin recording — because recording three short pieces is no biggie, right?

After nearly fourteen repetitions of the audition requirement’s “Samba” piece, I finally think I’ve got it. I turn around to press the stop button on the recorder and…yup, it’s out of battery.

And then when I finally get (what I think is) a good take of “Samba,” I go to listen to it on my computer. But there’s someone running the tap water in the background.

Yes, I was completely proven wrong. Recording these pieces took a good entire afternoon-plus-most-of-the-night — and after an examination from my jazz director — another frustrating evening with the piano and the recorder. I think the biggest thing I learned was the painful difference between a CD audition and a live audition — in a live audition, it’s a lot more holistic; the judge can physically see you in person, watch you move, watch you play; a couple mistakes here and there can be made up for by some (hopefully) fantastic improvisation later in the audition. But while you’re recording, not only are you haunted by the image of a few completely disgusted judges listening to your feedback-y CD, you realize that every time you see that red recording button light up, your fingers turn to mush. (I tried hiding the recorder; it didn’t help too much.)

I did end up finishing the CD after countless hours of this — next time, I’m definitely doing it much earlier. This coming February I’ll be auditioning for the All-Southern-California Jazz band, which’ll be a live audition in Westlake; wish me luck!

Speaking of which, have you guys ever practiced with Aebersolds? I never really used them until I started working with the CalArts CAP program this year — one of my instructors, drummer Tina Raymond, seems to have collected nearly all of his albums; thanks to her, I’ve got a lot more access to his books. They’re definitely just as frustrating as recording a CD — when you’re playing with this pre-recorded rhythm section, you’ve got no wiggle room, no chance to slow down or speed up, and very little room to make even small mistakes — initially, the chords seem to rapidly fly by. But hey, it’s a good thing — after you get a feel of a B-flat Blues or a Lady Bird rhythm track, it really helps you out in regards to keeping time and developing your ideas in a restricted amount of time. So when it comes to actually playing with a live rhythm section, you’ve got a way better understanding of the chord changes — it’s helped me get over the fear of hearing the chord changes fly by unacknowledged, putting my focus on developing a melodic solo instead.

Plus, the Aebersold books have really sweet vintage-y looking covers.

Anyways, one of the SCSBOA Honor Jazz band requirements is to be able to play along with the standard, “What Is This Thing Called Love?” (from the book pictured here).  Since I’m not too familiar with it, I’ve been collecting several recordings of it so I can get to know it a little better. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. What Is This Thing Called Love/Art Pepper/Modern Art: The Complete Art Pepper Recordings V2
2. What Is This Thing Called Love/Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette/Whisper Not (Live in Paris 1999)
3. What Is This Thing Called Love/Wynton Marsalis/Standard Time, V2 — Intimacy Calling

I found this when I was buying a track from the Whisper Not album — did you know Jarrett had a ‘fro back in the day?

This is totally different from my current mental picture of him. (On a side note, don’t you just love it when he hums along with his solos in every recording he releases? I do.):

So since I’ve only got a list of three What Is This Thing Called Love, what recordings of this standard do you recommend? Let me know in the comments or @thejazzpost. I’ll see if I can find anything in the January Downbeat I just got today in jazz class. :)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Yesterdays/Act Your Age/Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band

Thanks to my current jazz teacher (Mark Nilan, pictured in the far right), I was able to sneak into a “Groove Therapy” jazz workshop held by USC/CalArts professor Alphonso Johnson this past Friday. Though it took rushing out of school at noon and getting lost on the USC campus, it was pretty amazing sitting in a room full of twenty-something-year-old jazz fanatics — exactly where I want to belong.

Johnson basically talked to us about groove — how to get it; why it’s important to every musician — especially to the rhythm section of the jazz band. But the thing that I’ll always remember the most isn’t what he told me about groove — which,  coming from this jazz professor’s mouth, was still pretty rich and enlightening — but it’s what he showed me in regards to a solid groove. He gathered together some active musicians in the Los Angeles area — Mark Nilan on piano (this was actually the first time I’d heard him play with a group live — and now I can’t believe how lucky I am to be able to study with him), Brad Dutz on percussion, and Oscar Seaton on drumset. Though I didn’t get a chance to hear the first tune they played, I did stay for the last one — Weather Report’s Teen Town. It was so locked in and induced an unreasonable amount of foot-tapping — the solos that Dutz and Seaton traded off between percussion and drumset were so intense — we were all leaned forward in our seats until the very last beat. When I relayed this to Nilan, he told me that it was the first time they’d ever played this tune together. (check out Nilan at www.marknilanjr.com and Seaton at www.myspace.com/oscarseaton)

And for someone who goes to jazz rehearsals every single morning five days a week, that’s pretty darn amazing.

Alphonso Johnson’s currently an associate professor of USC’s Jazz Studies Department, but in the past he’s played with names like Wayne Shorter and Weather Report — be sure to check him out at www.embamba.com. Here’s a bit of what he sounds like:

If you think that you’ve seen the guy pictured in the left before somewhere on this site, you’re right — he was in the post about upcoming jazz festivals (and not to mention, wearing pretty much the same hat?). But the even better part was that he asked if he’d met me before when I shook hands with him — yes, Brad Dutz, yes I have! The picture in that previous post was taken last year during a jazz field trip to the Jazz Bakery (when it was still around, of course) to see Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band — Brad Dutz is an active and super creative percussionist in the Los Angeles area — check him out at www.braddutz.com.

Back then, Dutz was some random guy we saw in the lobby drinking coffee with his Big Phat Band bowling-shirt-esque uniform on. (oh look, the hat!)

Now that I think of it, that picture I took with him is probably one of the most fateful pictures I’ve ever taken, period. Small world!

Be sure to also check out the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band at www.bigphatband.com. (I also can’t help but mention that he’s wearing this hat on the website as well.)

As a side note, here’s the Real Book Pick from Friday: The Lady is a Tramp from the 1937 Rodgers & Hart musical Babes In Arms.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: September/Earth, Wind, & Fire/Earth, Wind, & Fire: Greatest Hits

If you haven’t got the slightest idea what I’m talking about, check out yesterday’s post to see what’s been happening with the West Ranch High School jazz band.

Today we opened the Real Book to Erroll Garner’s Misty:

It’s one of those romantic sitting-in-a-bar-contemplating-life tunes. This recording’s got a bit of a classical touch with the whole cadenza-esque bit at the end, don’t you think?

We also checked out  My Favorite Things – check out Coltrane’s recording of it if you haven’t yet; it’s genius. (Oh, and speaking of Coltrane’s genius, here’s an interesting post by Peter Hum of jazzblog.ca calling out someone who thinks a bit differently.)

When I played this back in the jazz room I was imagining a softer, whispery tenor sax melody — but I guess Coltrane’s always full of surprises. It’s so moving, though: the juxtaposition between this floaty melody and the sharp sound of the soprano sax. (But too bad whenever I hear soprano sax I think of Kenny G and his cascading Tarzan mane.) Oh, and they throw in Eric Dolphy on the flute to stir things up even more.  And adding in McCoy Tyner on the keys really ties it all together for me.

In the midst of playing My Favorite Things with my friend, Omer (donning the pink cast here), I discovered that my jazz teacher can play the bass. Woah. He joined in spontaneously on upright bass while we played — we both know that he plays trombone and piano (and he’s pretty darn good at the guitar as well) — but he plays bass, too?

I seriously have the coolest jazz teacher in the world. (Maybe if he reads this I’ll get a really great grade in the class. Just kidding.)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Devil May Care/Diana Krall/When I Look in Your Eyes

Back in the jazz room at West Ranch High School I’m lucky enough to have these three things: a trendy Yamaha keyboard (a similar one to the Motif model), a jazz band-exclusive standup Yamaha piano (unfortunately, the choir has already claimed the baby grand), and the fifth-edition Real Book 1 & 2.

But the keyboard’s got a massive amount of buttons that I’m still yet to figure out, and the acoustic piano — even with the lid up — can’t really be heard when the drums are playing.

This Real Book, however, has been one of the biggest facilitators in my exploration of the jazz world.

A bit about our jazz band — we’re the advanced band of the two jazz bands at West Ranch High School (otherwise known as the West Ranch High School Studio A Jazz Band) and we practice every day in the wee hours of the morning. At least that’s what 7:00 in the morning is for me. But having jazz as a first period is really nice in the fact that I’m waking up it every morning — even if it means blindly fumbling through blues warm-ups and rubbing the sleep out of my eyes at the same time.

It’s pretty difficult to describe my jazz teacher in words — he’s one of those sage, older teachers who are always, always right. And he’s actually always right, too. You’ll see what I mean when we get into jazz competition season in the spring.

Anyways, I just wanted to tell you about something kind of amusing that’s been going on this week in jazz class:

I have this habit of messing around with the Real Book after class (it’s still pretty early in the morning and the room’s always nice and quiet) — I either look in the table of contents for a song or I flip open to a random page and try to read it. It’s really soothing, especially right before I dive into AP Calculus the next period.

But yesterday the Real Book was already opened up to Alice in Wonderland, a wonderful tune on Bill Evans’ Sunday at the Village Vanguard album.

It’s such a pretty tune; I’ve got a huge soft spot for two-five-one-ish ballads like these. And I’ve been sitting at the piano for ages trying to figure out Evans’ chords on this recording. I know there’s transcriptions out there, but having someone else do the transcriptions for me kind of feels like cheating to me — I dunno, it’s a weird conscience thing.

Usually the room’s pretty empty — my jazz teacher leaves for his office in the next room, and there’s only a few musicians like me hanging around and practicing some music. But this time, my jazz teacher stayed and listened for a bit — and when I finished, he told me that since he knew I usually played the first thing I saw in the Real Book, he’d opened it up beforehand to Alice in Wonderland to see what I’d do.

This was yesterday — I think now he’s going to make his own habit of opening up the Real Book to what he wants to hear me play. And hey, I think I’m right — today it was open to Lady Bird:

What do you think he’s going to pick tomorrow?

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: In a Sentimental Mood/Duke Ellington and John Coltrane/Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (We’re playing a tenor feature arrangement of this and it’s super lovely — I’m looking forward to posting a video of it soon.)

P.S. Thanks to A Blog Supreme for mentioning thejazzpost –  be sure to check out other thoughts on today’s jazz at this blog here.

This week, NPR Jazz is asking bloggers like me to list five albums I’d use to introduce someone to today’s jazz. This is incredible because (a) I love today’s jazz, and (b) this is justification that I’m not crazy for running a blog about jazz — there’s more like me out there!

Even though I’m not in the age range of many of these bloggers (20+), being a sixteen-year-old jazz musician in high school gives me a personal look at what today’s kids are into, jazz or not. And surprisingly, jazz hasn’t perished, even in my generation. This actually reminds me of an article I just read in the October issue of Downbeat called “Why Jazz Endures,” with four takes on why jazz hasn’t died yet from Dan Morgenstern, David Baker, Steven Bernstein, and Branford Marsalis. (Check out Downbeat here — you can get it digitally, too!) Baker brought up a good point — there’s four reasons why jazz is still alive: it’s timeless, it brings people together despite their differences, it’s personal and spontaneous, and it’s “synonymous with freedom” (think about what improvisation really is).

So although I’m allowed to go all the way back to thirty years ago, I’m going to stick to the players who are playing now — the players that are living, breathing, and playing at this very moment. The albums I’m representing them with aren’t necessarily bestselling or the most popular albums — rather, they’re albums that I think embody modern jazz.

1. HIROMI UEHARA (& SONICBLOOM)/Time Control

I remember being a bit reluctant to introduce Hiromi to our high school jazz instructor because Googling Hiromi will result in one of three things: (1) something back-to-basics, (2) something classical, or (3) something that the average listener would mistake for techno music. Even though she says that one of her biggest inspirations was and is Oscar Peterson, Hiromi and her trendy 3-piece rhythm guys kind of depart from traditional tapping-your-foot-on-beats-2-and-4 jazz in this album. But then what is it? It’s still got a form — it’s not all over the place like free jazz sounds like sometimes. For now, I’ll refer to it as techno jazz (although you will get tiny bits of traditional jazz and classical mixed into it). Whether you’re into techno, classical, or traditional jazz, Hiromi’ll give you all three of them.

As a plus, if you want to impress your non-jazz-listening friends, Hiromi always has these crazy fast look-what-I-can-do licks on hand.

2. BRAD MEHLDAU/Largo

Some musicians start out with classical training (I know I did) — others jump right into jazz. But what I’ve seen in pianists like Bill Evans and Cedar Walton is that jazz pianists tend to have a base of classical training. And today’s Brad Mehldau, like these pianists, has the same background. Basically, Mehldau is great if you’re currently listening to (a) classical music or (b) something along the lines of Coldplay. Because what classical music, Mehldau, and Coldplay have in common is that you can hear the classical bits in action. Because like any kind of music, jazz is this creole of a million different musical ideas — so if you’re looking for something along the lines of classical + Coldplay + jazz, you’ve got Meldhau.

Meldhau’s one of those pianists that give me goosebumps — the good kind — at the end of each chord he plays. They’re rich and smooth and bold — even behind his often unusual melodies, they’re always there. Unlike Time Control, you can definitely switch on some Meldhau before you go to sleep.

3. ROD PIAZZA & THE MIGHTY FLYERS/Live at B.B. King’s Blues Club

For some reason, upbeat blues tunes seem to always the most popular among my non-jazz listener friends — it’s something about the swing and the pushing, upbeat tempo. Plus, Rod Piazza on the harp is one of those things you just can’t hate on. There’s no way. But my favorite part of this band is its female pianist (I have and always will have a soft spot for female jazz pianists), Honey Piazza. I had a friend who went to a Mighty Flyers concert that told me she was playing the keys with her toes at some point. To hear more of what I’m talking about, listen to The Stinger in this album. It’s a bit more traditional blues, but the Mighty Flyers definitely do their part in bringing back the appreciation for great basic blues to today’s listeners.

4. VIJAY IYER/Tragicomic

I first heard Iyer in his NPR Jazz at Newport live webcast a couple months ago. To be honest, it was a bit awkward to listen to at first — Iyer uses not-so-traditional chord voicings and meter changes that initially sound super strange. If you’re thinking about what albums to show your friends when you’re introducing them to modern jazz, this probably shouldn’t be the first album you reach for.

But like how Hiromi’s classical background comes up in her playing, Iyer’s background does the same — he’s got a B.S. in Mathematics and Physics from Yale & a Masters in Physics and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Technology and the Arts from UC Berkeley. If there’s any way to make jazz sound math-y, Iyer’s done it. And that’s what modern jazz is all about: blending the jazz from the past and the jazz in you — and for Iyer, the jazz in him is somewhat technical and irregular; maybe even revolutionary. So take a deep breath and abandon all of your jazz stereotypes before you listen to Vijay Iyer — he won’t be playing your traditional seventh chords and your average straightforward melody, but he will be playing  modern jazz, Vijay style.

Oh, and to add even more to his modern character, he’s got an active Twitter account. Go send a tweet about thejazzpost @vijayiyer.

5. GORDON GOODWIN’S BIG PHAT BAND/Act Your Age

Gordon Goodwin and his Big Phat Band have stuck with me since I first started playing jazz — he’s active in the LA area and he’s very well-connected with some of the schools in the area as well (we’ve even commissioned a song from him that we’ll be be playing October 22); in fact, I met him in person when I heard the band live for the first time when the Jazz Bakery was still around. And like everyone says, nothing’s better than live jazz music. Goodwin’s compositions bring the energy back into big band tunes (check out Act Your Age and Backrow Politics from this album) with a bit of a comic twist (for example, the trumpets featured in Backrow Politics are contrasted with a flute soli towards the end of the tune — in the live concert, the trumpets were mocking them from behind; it was absolutely hilarious). This band goes back to the jazz basics without losing its fun, entertaining feel.

Be sure to check out other “top 5 albums of today’s jazz” blog posts at NPR Jazz’s A Blog Supreme. (Remember Coltrane’s tune, A Love Supreme?)

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO: Bill Evans/Little Lulu/Compact Jazz