Bilbao New York Bilbao

Angela Brown personifies the ideal soprano: sheer vocal power; luxurious finesse; and shimmering, high pianissimos. With a charming personality larger than life, she unites opera, pops, and gospel in one sensational voice. A featured artist on the two-time Grammy Award® winning recording “Ask Your Mama,” Angela’s international reputation continues to grow.

Planet Jazz is a collective sextet which features the work of the highly estimable Peter Bernstein, trumpetist Joe Magnarelli, tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, pianist Spike Wilner, bassist Neal Miner and drummer Joe Strasser. It is a quintessential New York jazz group, bebop oriented but with a real blues edge.

Planet Jazz is a collective sextet which features the work of the highly estimable Peter Bernstein, trumpetist Joe Magnarelli, tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon, pianist Spike Wilner, bassist Neal Miner and drummer Joe Strasser. It is a quintessential New York jazz group, bebop oriented but with a real blues edge.

Lest you miss Theo Bleck-mann and Fumio Yasuda’s attempt to tune in to a bygone era, the vocalist and pianist begin this collection of early-to-mid 20th century German songs with the sound of radio static. The white noise is gone by the end of the second track, Eisler and Brecht’s “Das Deutsche Miserere,” and its absence suggests that the musicians found what they were looking for. But what should we make of what they’ve found? That everything here dates back to the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich is hardly indicative of an exercise in nostalgia. Bleckmann, according to his Web site, is a “Genre-bending, -skipping and -skirting vocalist and composer.” And Yasuda works in both the classical and jazz realms.

One of the most significant arrangers in jazz history, Gil Evans' three album-length collaborations with Miles Davis (Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain) are all considered classics. Evans had a lengthy and wide-ranging career that sometimes ran parallel to the trumpeter. Like Davis, Gil became involved in utilizing electronics in the '70s and preferred not to look back and re-create the past.

To hear many hard bop hard-liners tell it, all avant-garde jazz is nothing more than atonal screaming. The problem with such sweeping generalizations is that some avant-garde jazz is, in fact, quite musical. A perfect example is Dave Douglas' Convergence, an experimental, adventurous outing that incorporates everything from classical and chamber music to Jewish, Middle Eastern, and East European music.