Chet Baker died in 1988 but his legend has stubbornly refused to diminish and today he is one of the most consistently reissued jazz artists with interest in his early glory years as high as that in the ravaged, damaged artist who would continue to record until the end of his life.
He is one of the greatest contemporary jazz guitar players, who can fill large concert halls in almost any large city around the world.
Polar Bear is one of the most influential UK jazz bands of recent years, inspiring a new generation of young musicians who have come up in their wake.
Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer one of the first European jazz musicians to successfully harness jazz with dance music in the 1990s and in the process managed to take jazz to an audience it had never reached: the club generation.
Less than a month after Kind of Blue was recorded in 1959, and largely unremarked upon in the glare of publicity surrounding the 50th anniversary of that momentous album, John Coltrane first entered the studio to make what in many ways was that mighty album’s equal: Giant Steps.
While Jason Yarde is better known as a prolific producer mainly for the Dune label and more recently for Empirical, as a saxophonist he is noted for a wide variety of work including the celebrated 1990s band J-Life and his own group WAH.
Cecil Taylor shook the jazz scene up in the 1950s and has not looked back since.
Take a minute just to contemplate the power and glory of Sonny Rollins and the sheer scale of his achievement.
As a brand new double live album is released and ahead of a tour by his newly constituted group early next year the great Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek looks back to his early years before Afric Pepperbird, the definitive album that changed the face of European jazz forever and launched a new sound identified with his label ECM.
Meteor-like, Gwilym Simcock hit the jazz scene with a vengeance when he made an assured debut with Perception two years ago, devastatingly belying his newcomer status.