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May 20, 2013 Divine: The Jazz Albums, 1954-1958 packs four CDs with Vaughan's music, recorded live or in the studio with bands big and small. Two live albums from Chicago nightclubs are standouts, partly when a performance threatens to slide off the rails.

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May 16, 2013 In a career that ran from the 1930s into the 1980s, and included work in big bands and rock 'n' roll, the clarinetist, saxophonist and bandleader changed to reflect the times. Herman would have turned 100 on May 16.

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May 13, 2013 Four albums of reissues and archival recordings from Crosby's own vaults are getting a high-profile release; they demonstrate that his influence on modern singing is so huge, we barely notice it anymore. He could sing anything from Latin to Hawaiian to The Great American Songbook.

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April 11, 2013 Mosaic Records has released Classic Earl Hines Sessions 1928-1945, a seven-disc showcase for the jazz pianist and bandleader. Hines' right hand played lines in bright, clear octaves — and his left hand had a mind of its own.

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March 20, 2013 On his new album, The 3dom Factor, Altschul is great at mixing opposites: abstract melodic concepts with parade beats, open improvising and percolating swing. The album is the sort of comeback that reminds you how much good music the artist made the first time around.

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February 28, 2013 Known for his work in New Klezmer Trio, clarinetist Ben Goldberg has just released two new albums for different quintets: Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues and Unfold Ordinary Mind.

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February 13, 2013 The saxophonist and his quartet cross-pollinate Indian classical music and vintage Captain Beefheart to create complicated rhythms and solos reminiscent of jazz-rock fusion.

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January 31, 2013 A new four-CD set highlighting the music of the jazz keyboardist and drummer contains two discs that are gems and another two that have their moments.

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January 11, 2013 An album recording of the guitarist from 1959 captures the thrilling sound of Midwestern jazz.

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December 21, 2012 Jazz lost many great saxophonists in 2012, including David S. Ware, John Tchicai, Byard Lancaster, Faruq Z. Bey, Hal McKusick and Red Holloway. Critic Kevin Whitehead pays tribute to three more of his favorites.

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December 11, 2012 Critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new, seven-disc Charles Mingus box set chronicling the jazz legend's mid-'60s live performances. The records, Whitehead says, "can be a little raw, as if the explosive music caught the engineers by surprise."

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December 7, 2012 We remember Dave Brubeck, who died Wednesday at age 91, with a March 2012 review from jazz critic Kevin Whitehead, who wrote about a few of the more obscure titles from Dave Brubeck's quartet.

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November 26, 2012 The violinist attempts to mix jazz, classical and traditional Chinese music with his octet on Burning Bridge.

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November 21, 2012 "The Empress of the Blues" gave voice the listeners' tribulations and yearnings of the 1920s and '30s. A new 10-CD box set collects the complete works of the colossus who straddled jazz and blues.

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October 30, 2012 The freewheeling saxophonist and his small group from the 1970s came together for a live concert in 2007 — their first together in more than two decades. Now, a recording has been posthumously released on CD, and critic Kevin Whitehead says it's like they never went away.

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