Jazz

Brigitte Zarie is a Canadian-born American singer, songwriter and composer.

Nina Simone (/ˈniːnə sɨˈmoʊn/; born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist who worked in a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.

Sharon Leslie

An American jazz singer, described by music critic Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."

Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones; August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963), was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as "the most popular black female recording artist of the '50s". Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer often referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.

Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter with a career spanning nearly thirty years. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and improvisation skills, which made up for her limited range and lack of formal music education.

Stanley William Turrentine (April 5, 1934 – September 12, 2000) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.

John Leslie "Wes" Montgomery (March 6, 1923 – June 15, 1968) was an American jazz guitarist. He is widely considered one of the major jazz guitarists, emerging after such seminal figures as Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian and influencing countless others, including George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Bobby Broom, Royce Campbell, Grant Green, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Howe, Russell Malone, Pat Martino, Pat Metheny, Lee Ritenour, Mark Whitfield, Joe Diorio, Tuck Andress, David Becker, Randy Napoleon, Larry Coryell and Emily Remler.

Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is a trumpeter, composer, teacher, music educator, and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, United States. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of classical and jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and his Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the son of jazz musician Ellis Marsalis, Jr. (pianist), grandson of Ellis Marsalis, Sr., and brother of Branford (saxophonist), Delfeayo (trombonist), and Jason (drummer). He performed the national anthem of Super Bowl XX in 1986.

Conrad Janis (born February 11, 1928) is an American jazz musician (trombone) and also a theatre, film, and television actor. He was born in New York City, New York, the son of Harriet, a writer, and Sidney Janis, an art dealer and writer, and he has a brother named Carroll.

An American singer who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. He was widely noted for his soft baritone voice, performing in big band and jazz genres, and was a major force in popular music for three decades.

Oliver C. Todd (1916–2001) was an American Jazz band leader, organ, piano, and trumpet player. He was born in Kansas City, United States. He was one of the city's most famous band leaders and led a band known as the Hottentots which included, at various times, the following musicians Tiny Davies (trumpet) formerly with The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Gene Ramey (string bass), Winston Williams (string bass), Bill Graham (alto sax) later with Count Basie and Ellington, Clifford Love, Eddie McClelland (tenor sax) & Clayborn Graves. In 1992, he won the KC Jazz jazz Heritage Award. He was also a friend of Charlie Parker. After his death, he was for some time was interred in an unmarked grave until The Coda Jazz Fund paid for a headstone for him.

Ward Walrath Kimball (March 4, 1914 – July 8, 2002), born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an animator for the Walt Disney Studios. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators, known as Disney's Nine Old Men.

Arthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. (/ˈteɪtəm/, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist.

Giuseppe "Joe" Venuti (possibly September 16, 1903 – August 14, 1978) was an Italian-American jazz musician and pioneer jazz violinist.

Scott Joplin (/ˈdʒɒplɪn/; c. 1867/1868 – April 1, 1917) was an African-American composer and pianist. Joplin achieved fame for his ragtime compositions and was dubbed the "King of Ragtime Writers". During his brief career, he wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag.

In the 2000s in jazz, well-established jazz musicians, such as Dave Brubeck, Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Jessica Williams, Michael Franks and George Benson, continued to perform and record. In the 1990s and 2000s, a number of young musicians emerged, including US pianists Brad Mehldau, Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Chris Potter and Joshua Redman, and bassist Christian McBride.

In the 1990s in jazz, jazz rap continued progressing from the late 1980s and early 1990s, and incorporated jazz influence into hip hop. In 1988, Gang Starr released the debut single "Words I Manifest", sampling Dizzy Gillespie's 1962 "Night in Tunisia", and Stetsasonic released "Talkin' All That Jazz", sampling Lonnie Liston Smith. Gang Starr's debut LP, No More Mr. Nice Guy (Wild Pitch, 1989), and their track "Jazz Thing" (CBS, 1990) for the soundtrack of Mo' Better Blues, sampling Charlie Parker and Ramsey Lewis. Gang Starr also collaborated with Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard.Groups making up the collective known as the Native Tongues Posse tended towards jazzy releases; these include the Jungle Brothers' debut Straight Out the Jungle (Warlock, 1988) and A Tribe Called Quest's People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (Jive, 1990) and The Low End Theory (Jive, 1991).

In the 1980s in jazz, the jazz community shrank dramatically and split. A mainly older audience retained an interest in traditional and straight-ahead jazz styles. Wynton Marsalis strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called pop fusion or "smooth jazz" became successful and garnered significant radio airplay. Smooth jazz saxophonists include Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny G, Kirk Whalum, Boney James, and David Sanborn. Smooth jazz received frequent airplay with more straight-ahead jazz in "quiet storm" time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.S., helping to establish or bolster the careers of vocalists including Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, and Sade. In this same time period Chaka Khan released Echoes of an Era, which featured Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White. She also released the song "And the Melody Still Lingers On (Night in Tunisia)" with Dizzy Gillespie reviving the solo break from "Night in Tunisia".

In the 1970s in jazz, jazz become increasingly influenced by Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments (piano, double bass, etc.). Artists such as Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola increasingly influenced the genre with jazz fusion, a hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion which was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments, and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix. All Music Guide states that "..until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate." However, "...as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces."

In the late 1960s, Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments (piano, double bass, etc.) broke through. There are two main varieties: Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the US right after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s. Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-1950s as bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, and Arturo Sandoval. Brazilian jazz such as bossa nova is derived from samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th-century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English. The style was pioneered by Brazilians João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim. The related term jazz-samba describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.

By the end of the 1940s, the nervous energy and tension of bebop was replaced with a tendency towards calm and smoothness, with the sounds of cool jazz, which favoured long, linear melodic lines. It emerged in New York City, as a result of the mixture of the styles of predominantly white jazz musicians and black bebop musicians, and it dominated jazz in the first half of the 1950s. The starting point were a series of singles on Capitol Records in 1949 and 1950 of a nonet led by trumpeter Miles Davis, collected and released first on a ten-inch and later a twelve-inch as the Birth of the Cool. Cool jazz recordings by Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Stan Getz and the Modern Jazz Quartet usually have a "lighter" sound which avoided the aggressive tempos and harmonic abstraction of bebop. Cool jazz later became strongly identified with the West Coast jazz scene, but also had a particular resonance in Europe, especially Scandinavia, with emergence of such major figures as baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin and pianist Bengt Hallberg. The theoretical underpinnings of cool jazz were set out by the blind Chicago pianist Lennie Tristano, and its influence stretches into such later developments as Bossa nova, modal jazz, and even free jazz. See also the list of cool jazz and West Coast musicians for further detail.

In the early 1940s in jazz, bebop emerged, led by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. It helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music."

In the 1930s in jazz, swing jazz emerged as a dominant form in American music, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw. Duke Ellington and his band members composed numerous swing era hits that have become standards: "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933) and "Caravan" (1936), among others. Other influential bandleaders of this period were Benny Goodman and Count Basie.

The period from the end of the First World War until the start of the Depression in 1929 is known as the "Jazz Age". Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to old cultural values. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York.

Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes compositions written before 1920 that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work. Some of the tunes listed were instant hits and quickly became well-known standards, while others were popularized later. The time of the most influential recordings of a song, where appropriate, is indicated on the list.

A bibliography of books about jazz music, biographies and related content:

Rare groove is soul or jazz music that is very hard to source or relatively obscure. Rare groove is primarily associated with funk, jazz and pop, but is also connected to subgenres including jazz fusion, Latin jazz, soul, R&B, northern soul, and disco. Vinyl records that fall into this category generally have high re-sale prices. Rare groove records have been sought after by not only collectors and lovers of this type of music, but also by hip hop artists and producers. Online music retailers sell a wide selection of rare groove at more affordable prices, offering fast downloads in digital format. This availability and ease of access has brought about a resurgence of the genre in recent years.

Jazz royalty is a term encompassing the many jazz musicians who have been termed as exceptionally musically gifted and informally granted honorific, "aristocratic" or "royal" titles.

Jazz poetry is poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation". The genre also includes poems written about jazz music, musicians, or the jazz milieu. During the 1920s, several poets began to eschew the conventions of rhythm and style; among these were Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings. The significance of the simultaneous evolution of poetry and jazz during the 1920s was apparent to many poets of the era, resulting in the merging of the two art forms into jazz poetry. Jazz poetry has long been something of an "outsider" art form that exists somewhere outside the mainstream, having been conceived in the 1920s by African Americans, maintained in the 1950s by counterculture poets like those of the Beat generation, and adapted in modern times into hip-hop music and live poetry events known as poetry slams.

This is a list of notable jazz institutions and organizations.

A contrafact is a musical composition built using the chord progression of a pre-existing one but introducing a new melody and arrangement. Typically the original tune's progression and song form will be reused but occasionally just a section will be reused in the new composition. This article is a list of notable contrafacts by jazz artists.

This is a list of notable venues where jazz music is played. It includes jazz clubs, clubs, dancehalls and historic venues as well.

The St. Lucia Jazz Festival is an annual internationally known event which takes place on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. The event brings together international as well as local musicians. The jazz festival not only features jazz music but also R&B and Calypso.

The North Sea Jazz Festival is an annual festival held each second weekend of July in the Netherlands at the Ahoy venue. It used to be in The Hague but since 2006 it has been held in Rotterdam. This is because the Statenhal where the festival was held before was demolished in 2006.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, often known as Jazz Fest, is an annual celebration of the music and culture of New Orleans and Louisiana. Use of the term "Jazz Fest" can also include the days surrounding the Festival and the many shows at unaffiliated New Orleans nightclubs scheduled during the Festival event weekends.

The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. It was established in 1954 by socialite Elaine Lorillard, who, together with husband Louis Lorillard, financed the festival for many years. The couple hired jazz impresario George Wein to organize the event to help them bring jazz to the resort town.

The Montreux Jazz Festival (formerly Festival de Jazz Montreux and Festival International de Jazz Montreux) is a music festival in Switzerland, held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. It is the second largest annual jazz festival in the world after Canada's Montreal International Jazz Festival.

The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (English: Montreal International Jazz Festival) is an annual jazz festival held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the world's largest jazz festival. Every year it features roughly 3,000 artists from 30-odd countries, more than 650 concerts (including 450 free outdoor performances), and welcomes close to 2.5 million visitors (34% of whom are tourists) as well as 400 accredited journalists. The festival takes place at 10 free outdoor stages and 10 indoor concert halls.

The Monterey Jazz Festival (MJF), in Monterey, California, is one of the longest consecutively running jazz festivals. It debuted on October 3, 1958 and was founded by San Francisco jazz radio broadcaster Jimmy Lyons.

Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival (JJF) is one of the largest jazz festivals in the world and arguably the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere, held in Jakarta, Indonesia. The annual jazz festival is held every early March and was designed to be one of the largest jazz festivals globally. It was held for the first time in 2005, when approximately 125 groups and 1,405 artists performed in 146 shows. The first festival was attended by 47,500 visitors during its three-day stretch.

Copenhagen Jazz Festival is an annual Jazz event, taking place in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, each July. Copenhagen Jazz Festival was established as a festival in 1979, but already from 1964 Tivoli Gardens presented a series of concerts under the name Copenhagen Jazz Festival with Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and many others.

The Cape Town International Jazz Festival is an annual music festival held in Cape Town, South Africa. The first one was held in 2000 to 2005 and is recognised as the fourth largest jazz festival in the world and the largest jazz festival on the African continent. The festival used to be called the Cape Town North Sea Jazz Festival due to its association with the North Sea Festival in the Netherlands.

The Beaches International Jazz Festival is a 10-day music festival held each year in the lakeside Beaches community of Toronto in the month of July. The festival first started in 1988. It is one of Canada's largest free jazz festival with nearly 800,000 attendees, throughout its 10 day span. The Festival takes place across a number of venues. Stage concerts are held in several different parks within the area and also along a two kilometre stretch of the Beach mainstreet - Queen Street East. Every year, the Festival brings in internationally acclaimed jazz performers while also showcasing local talent, including "new generation" jazz musicians. The Festival now hires around 1000 artists per annum, including 50 bands for its "StreetFest" event along Queen Street East. The Festival offers concerts at six stage locations: Kew Gardens Main Stage; the Latin Square and Big Band Stages (also located in Kew Gardens park); the Woodbine Park Main Stage and the New Generation and Youth stages also at Woodbine Park. The Festival holds a Workshop and Lecture Series which varies each year and is programmed to appeal to both professional musicians and to the general jazz loving public. The Festival also sponsors a "Jazz in Motion" Juried Photography Exhibition.

This is the complete discography of the main 12-inch (8000) series of LPs issued by Verve Records, a label founded in 1956 by producer Norman Granz in Los Angeles, CA. Alongside new sessions Granz re-released many of the recordings of his earlier labels Clef and Norgran on Verve.

Winter & Winter is a Munich-based record label that specializes in jazz, classical and improvised music which was founded by Stefan Winter following the demise of the JMT label. Since 1997 Winter & Winter has released records by Dave Douglas, Paul Motian, Jim Black, Fred Frith and Uri Caine and rereleased albums from the JMT catalogue, including recordings by Steve Coleman, Cassandra Wilson, Greg Osby, Django Bates and Paul Motian.

In all beginnings... a mystical, magic force, What course, what destiny... determined in time.

This discography of the Riverside label includes the two principal 12" LP series. The main label's mono series had a 12- (later RLP 12-) prefix and the RLP 1100 series consisted of stereo issues (not given here) of albums also released in mono. The Jazzland subsidiary is also listed, but the earlier 10" series are omitted. They principally were the 1000 series of reissues of early jazz, and the 2500 series of new recordings unrestricted to a single style. Albums issued on the subsidiary Battle (largely gospel), Judson and Washington labels are also omitted, as are the 100 series (12" reissues of early jazz), 600 series (folk music), and 800 series (primarily folk, cabaret, and comedy).

This is the discography for jazz record label Prestige Records. Not all original releases are included. Others are listed by the Jazz Discography Project. The earlier New Jazz/Prestige 78rpm releases and the 100/200 (10" LP) series, (among others) are omitted. Prestige also released albums on several subsidiary labels including the New Jazz, Bluesville, Moodsville and Swingsville labels.

Muse Records was an American record label active circa 1972 to 1996 which released jazz and blues music.

This is the discography of the MPS jazz music record label.

The discography for Milestone Records runs from 1966 when the label was established by Orrin Keepnews and Dick Katz.

Mainstream Records was an American indie record label, which released jazz, rock music, and soundtracks during the 1970s.

Landmark Records was an American jazz record label founded in 1985 by Orrin Keepnews as a successor to Milestone Records. Landmark Records published albums recorded by the Kronos Quartet of music by Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk, as well as straight jazz albums. Landmark passed to Muse Records in 1993. 32 Jazz acquired the holdings of the Muse and Landmark labels in 1996. In 2003, Savoy Jazz (which had become a subsidiary of Nippon Columbia) acquired the rights to the Muse and Landmark catalogs from 32 Jazz.

JMT Records (an acronym of Jazz Music Today) was a German record label, based in Munich and founded by producer Stefan F. Winter, that specialised in contemporary jazz and operated from 1985 until 1995.

India Navigation was an American independent record label that was active from the 1970s to the early 1990s. Founded by corporate lawyer Bob Cummins, the label specialized in jazz music, particularly avant-garde jazz.

Discography for the American jazz record label Impulse! Records. Original releases had the A- prefix for the mono release and AS- for the stereo.

Groove Merchant was an American jazz and R&B record label during the 1970s. It was run by producer Sonny Lester and distributed by Pickwick Records. Notable artists included Chick Corea, O'Donel Levy, Buddy Rich, Jimmy McGriff, and Lionel Hampton. Lester would later close Groove Merchant and restructure it as Lester Radio Corporation, or LRC, and have it distributed for a time by TK Records. Lester still retains the rights to the Groove Merchant/LRC back catalog and independently distributes them on compact disc.

Freedom Records was a jazz record label, headed by Shel Safran linked with the producer Alan Bates, as with his Black Lion Records.

Flying Dutchman Records was an American jazz record label, which was owned by veteran music industry executive, producer and songwriter Bob Thiele. Initially distributed by Atlantic Records, Thiele made a five-album deal in 1972 with Mega Records to issue five albums in the Flying Dutchman Series. The deal was not renewed and distribution shifted to RCA Records, which took over the label in 1976. Some of the musicians who recorded several albums for the label include singer Leon Thomas, saxophonist Gato Barbieri, arranger Oliver Nelson, saxophonist Tom Scott and pianist Lonnie Liston Smith.

ESP-Disk is a New York-based record label, founded in 1964 by lawyer Bernard Stollman.

ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) is a record label founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by Manfred Eicher. While ECM is best known for jazz music, the label has released a wide variety of recordings, and ECM's artists often refuse to acknowledge boundaries between genres. ECM's motto is the Most Beautiful Sound Next to Silence, taken from a 1971 review of ECM releases in CODA, a Canadian jazz magazine.

CTI Records (Creed Taylor Incorporated) is a jazz record label founded in 1967 by producer/A&R manager Creed Taylor. Its first album release was Wes Montgomery's A Day In The Life in 1967. The latest new release, by the CTI Jazz All-Star Band, was recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2009, but released only in Japan in November 2010 on multiple formats: CD, DVD and Blu-ray. Initially, CTI was a subsidiary of A&M Records, then the label went independent in 1970. Its roster of artists included George Benson, Bob James, Walter Wanderley, Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Stanley Turrentine, Ron Carter, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Deodato.

Contemporary Records was a jazz record label founded by Lester Koenig in 1951 in Los Angeles. Contemporary was known for seminal recordings embodying the West Coast sound, but also released recordings based in New York.

Cobblestone Records was an American jazz record label.

BYG Actuel was a French record label specializing in free jazz. The label also released a small number of non-jazz recordings by artists such as Musica Elettronica Viva, Freedom and Gong.

This is the discography of Blue Note Records, the American jazz record label. Most of the records were studio recordings produced by Alfred Lion or Francis Wolff. The two main series were '1500', which ran from 1955 to 1958, and '4000', which ran c.1958 to 1972. The 'BN-LA' series followed during the 1970s: this series contained many compilations and reissues in addition to new studio albums.

Bethlehem Records was a record label based in New York and Hollywood founded by Gus Wildi in 1953. It was bought by King Records in the early 1960s.

Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes tunes written in or after the 1950s that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work.

Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes tunes written in the 1940s that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work.

Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes compositions written in the 1930s that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work. Some of the tunes listed were already well known standards by the 1940s, while others were popularized later. Where appropriate, the years when the most influential recordings of a song were made are indicated in the list.

Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes compositions written in the 1920s that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work. Some of the tunes listed were already well-known standards by the 1930s, while others were popularized later. The time of the most influential recordings of a song, where appropriate, is indicated on the list.

Jazz standards are musical compositions that are widely known, performed and recorded by jazz artists as part of the genre's musical repertoire. This list includes compositions written before 1920 that are considered standards by at least one major fake book publication or reference work. Some of the tunes listed were instant hits and quickly became well-known standards, while others were popularized later. The time of the most influential recordings of a song, where appropriate, is indicated on the list.

This is a list of swing and Western swing musicians.

The following is a list of soul jazz musicians.

The following artists and bands have performed smooth jazz.

This article lists notable scat singers by year of birth. It is also sortable alphabetically.

The following are notable jazz fusion performers or bands.

The following is a list of jazz blues musicians.

The following is a list of hard bop musicians. Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing. David H. Rosenthal contends in his book Hard Bop that the genre is, to a large degree, the natural creation of a generation of African-American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm and blues were the dominant forms of black American music.:24 Prominent hard bop musicians included Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Tadd Dameron. Hard bop is sometimes referred to as "funky hard bop." The "funky" label refers to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style. The descriptor is also used to describe soul jazz, which is commonly associated with hard bop.

List of cool jazz and West Coast jazz musicians and vocalists.

The following is a list of chamber jazz musicians.

For the main article, please see Bebop.

The following is a list of notable vibraphone players in jazz, as a primary or secondary instrument:

This is an alphabetical list of notable Jazz vocalists.

This is a list of jazz violinists who have become notable. Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. The earliest references to jazz performance using the violin as a solo instrument was during the first decades of the 20th century. Early jazz violinists included Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; Claude "Fiddler" Williams, who played with Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy. Joe Venuti was best known for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Georgie Stoll was a jazz violinist who became an orchestra leader and film music director.

This is an alphabetical list of jazz trumpeters for whom Wikipedia has articles.

This is an alphabetical list of jazz trombonists for whom Wikipedia has articles.

Jazz saxophonists are musicians who play various types of saxophones (alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone etc.) in jazz and its associated subgenres. The techniques and instrumentation of this type of performance have evolved over the 20th century, influenced by both movements of musicians that became the subgenres and by particularly influential sax players who helped reshape the music.

This is an alphabetized list of notable musicians who play or played jazz piano. The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception, in both solo and ensemble settings. Its role is multifaceted due largely to the instrument's combined melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic capabilities.

This is an alphabetized list of notable musicians who play or played percussion, excluding keyboard percussion. Only add names here if the person has their own article on Wikipedia, please.

This is an alphabetized list of notable musicians who play or played jazz organ. Category is listed as: jazz organists .

The following is a list of notable jazz guitar players, including guitarists from related jazz genres such as Western Swing, latin jazz, and jazz-rock fusion. For an article giving a short history of the most influential guitarists, see the jazz guitarists article.

Jazz drummers play percussion (predominantly the drum set) in jazz, jazz fusion, and other jazz subgenres such as latin jazz. The techniques and instrumentation of this type of performance have evolved over the 1900s, influenced by jazz at large and the individual drummers within it. Jazz required a method of playing percussion different from traditional European styles, one that was easily adaptable to the different rhythms of the new genre, fostering the creation of jazz drumming's hybrid technique. As each period in the evolution of jazz—swing and bebop, for example—tended to have its own rhythmic style, jazz drumming continued to evolve along with the music. In the 1970s and 1980s, jazz drumming incorporated elements of rock and Latin styles.

This article lists notable musicians who have played the clarinet.

This list of jazz bassists includes performers of the double bass and since the 1950s, and particularly in the jazz subgenre of jazz fusion which developed in the 1970s, electric bass players.

Yass (jass) is a Polish music style from late 1980 that mixes jazz, improvised music, techno, punk rock, and folk. This style began in Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz. The term was coined by Tymon Tymański, a double-bass and guitar player from Gdansk, who wanted to stress a novelty of the new style.

West Coast jazz refers to various styles of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a subgenre of cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily arranged, and more often composition-based. While this style was prominent for a while, it was by no means the only style of jazz played on the West Coast, which exhibited more variety than could be conveyed by a simple name.

Trad jazz, short for "traditional jazz," refers to the Dixieland and ragtime jazz styles of the early 20th century, which typically used a front line of horns, clarinet and trombone in contrast to more modern styles which usually include saxophones, and the revival of these styles in mid 20th-century Britain before the emergence of beat music.

Swing music, or simply swing, is a form of American music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1940. Swing uses a strong rhythm section of double bass and drums as the anchor for a lead section of brass instruments such as trumpets and trombones, woodwinds including saxophones and clarinets, and sometimes stringed instruments such as violin and guitar, medium to fast tempos, and a "lilting" swing time rhythm. The name swing came from the phrase ‘swing feel’ where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, a period known as the Swing Era. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong rhythmic "groove" or drive.

Harlem Stride Piano, stride piano, commonly abbreviated to stride, is a jazz piano style that was developed in the large cities of the East Coast, mainly New York, during the 1920s and 1930s. The left hand characteristically plays a four-beat pulse with a single bass note, octave, seventh or tenth interval on the first and third beats, and a chord on the second and fourth beats. Occasionally this pattern is reversed by placing the chord on the downbeat and bass note(s) on the upbeat. Unlike earlier "St. Louis"-style pianists, stride players' left hands often leapt greater distances on the keyboard, and they played in a wider range of tempos and with a greater emphasis on improvisation.

Soul jazz is a development of jazz incorporating strong influences from blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often an organ trio featuring a Hammond organ.

Smooth jazz is a genre of music that grew out of jazz and is influenced by rhythm and blues, funk, rock and roll, and pop music styles (separately, or, in any combination). Musicians such as Kenny G., Ramsey Lewis, David Koz, and Spyro Gyra have had hits with instrumental recordings, while singers such as Anita Baker, Sade, Sting and Norah Jones have found success with vocal releases. George Benson remains a popular Smooth Jazz artist as both a singer and guitar player.

Ska jazz is a music genre derived by fusing the melodic content of jazz with the rhythmic and harmonic content of early Jamaican Music introduced by the "Fathers of Ska" in the late 1950s. The ska-jazz movement began during the 1990s in New York and London, where pioneering avant-garde jazz and reggae musicians pushed the boundaries of reggae music. They were combining traditions with modern tendencies, using the reggae beat along with high improvisation and jazz harmonies, primarily by horns and percussion.

Punk jazz describes the amalgamation of elements of the jazz tradition (usually free jazz and jazz fusion of the 1960s and 1970s) with the instrumentation or conceptual heritage of punk rock (typically the more experimental and dissonant strains, such as no wave and hardcore). John Zorn's band Naked City, James Chance and the Contortions, Lounge Lizards, Universal Congress Of, Laughing Clowns and Zymosis are notable examples of punk jazz artists.

Post-bop is a genre of small-combo jazz that evolved in the early to mid-1960s.

An organ trio, in a jazz context, is a group of three jazz musicians, typically consisting of a Hammond organ player, a drummer, and either a jazz guitarist or a saxophone player. In some cases the saxophonist will join a trio which consists of an organist, guitarist, and drummer, making it a quartet. Organ trios were a popular type of jazz ensemble for club and bar settings in the 1950s and 1960s, performing a blues-based style of jazz that incorporated elements of R&B. The organ trio format was characterized by long improvised solos and an exploration of different musical "moods".

Orchestral jazz is a jazz genre that developed in New York in the 1920s. Early innovators of the genre, such as Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, include some of the most highly regarded musicians, composers, and arrangers in all of jazz history. The fusion of jazz's rhythmic and instrumental characteristics with the scale and structure of an orchestra, made orchestral jazz distinct from the musical genres that preceded its emergence. Its development contributed both to the popularization of jazz, as well as the critical legitimization of jazz as an art form.

Nu jazz is a genre of contemporary electronic music. It is also written as nü-jazz or NuJazz and is sometimes called electronic jazz, electro-jazz, electric jazz, e-jazz, jazztronica, jazz house, phusion, neo-jazz, future jazz, jazz-hop or electro-lounge.The term was coined in the late 1990s to refer to music that blends jazz elements with other musical styles, such as funk, soul, electronic dance music, and free improvisation.

Neo-bop is a style of jazz that emerged in the 1980s as a reaction against free jazz and jazz fusion. In the United States it is associated with Wynton Marsalis and "The Young Lions." The effort earned praise and also criticism. Miles Davis called it "warmed over turkey" and others deemed it to be too dependent on the past. The movement, however, received praise from Time magazine and others who welcomed the return of more accessible forms of jazz. There were also those who deemed it a valid evolution from hard bop.

Modal jazz is jazz that uses musical modes rather than chord progressions as a harmonic framework. Originating in the late 1950s and 1960s, modal jazz is epitomized by Miles Davis's 1958 composition "Milestones", 1959 album Kind of Blue, and John Coltrane's classic quartet from 1960–64. Other important performers include Woody Shaw, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Larry Young, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson, Chick Corea and Bobby Hutcherson. Though the term comes from the use of the pitches of particular modes (or scales) in the creation of solos, modal jazz compositions or accompaniments may only or additionally make use of the following techniques:

Mainstream jazz is a genre of jazz music that was first used in reference to the playing styles around the 1950s of musicians like Buck Clayton among others; performers who once heralded from the era of big band swing music who did not abandon swing for bebop, instead performing the music in smaller ensembles. The medium once lay dormant during the 1960s, but regained popularity in the 70s.

The term "M-Base" is used in several ways. In the 1980s, a loose collective of young African-American musicians including Steve Coleman, Graham Haynes, Cassandra Wilson, Geri Allen, Robin Eubanks, and Greg Osby emerged in Brooklyn with a new sound and specific ideas about creative expression. Using a term coined by Steve Coleman, they called these ideas "M-Base-concept" (short for "macro-basic array of structured extemporization") and critics have used this term to categorize this scene’s music as a jazz style. But Coleman stressed "M-Base" doesn’t denote a musical style but a way of thinking about creating music. As famous musicians did in the past, he also refuses the word "jazz" as a label for his music and the music tradition represented by musicians like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, etc. However, the musicians of the M-Base movement, which also included dancers and poets, strived for common creative musical languages, so their early recordings show a lot of similarities reflecting their common ideas, the experiences of working together, and their similar cultural background. To label this kind of music, jazz critics have established the word "M-Base" as a jazz style for lack of a better term, distorting its original meaning.

Cuban music and jazz 1943 New York

Kansas City jazz is a style of jazz that developed in Kansas City, Missouri and the surrounding Kansas City Metropolitan Area during the 1930s and marked the transition from the structured big band style to the musical improvisation style of Bebop. The hard-swinging, bluesy transition style is bracketed by Count Basie who in 1929 signed with the Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra and Kansas City native Charlie Parker who was to usher in the Bebop style in the 1940s. According to a Kansas City website, "While New Orleans was the birthplace of jazz, America's music grew up in Kansas City". Kansas City is known as one of the most popular "cradles of jazz". Other cities include New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and New York City.

Jazz rap is a fusion subgenre of hip hop music and jazz, developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The lyrics are often based on political consciousness, Afrocentrism, and general positivism. AllMusic writes that the genre "was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter". Musically, the rhythms have been typically those of hip hop rather than jazz, over which are placed repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation: trumpet, double bass, etc. The amount of improvisation varies between artists: some groups improvise lyrics and solos, while many of them do not. A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Dream Warriors, and Digable Planets are pioneers of the jazz rap genre.

Jazz fusion, fusion, or jazz rock is a musical genre that developed in the late 1960s from mixing funk and rhythm and blues rhythms with the electric instruments, amplified sound, electronic effects and playing styles of rock music together with jazz's complex time signatures (which were derived from non-Western music) and jazz's complex chord progressions and altered and extended chords. Fusion musicians typically create extended instrumental compositions based around a melody and a chord progression and lengthy solo improvisations. Fusion songs use brass instruments such as trumpet and saxophone as melody and soloing instruments. The rhythm section typically consists of electric bass (in some cases fretless), electric guitar, electric piano/synthesizer (in contrast to the double bass and piano used in earlier jazz) and drums. As with jazz forms that preceded fusion, all of the instruments–including the rhythm section instruments–are used as soloing instruments and all demonstrate a high level of instrumental technique.

Jazz-funk is a subgenre of jazz music characterized by a strong back beat (groove), electrified sounds and an early prevalence of analog synthesizers. The integration of funk, soul, and R&B music and styles into jazz resulted in the creation of a genre whose spectrum is quite wide and ranges from strong jazz improvisation to soul, funk or disco with jazz arrangements, jazz riffs, and jazz solos, and sometimes soul vocals.

The 12-bar blues or blues changes is one of the most prominent chord progressions in popular music. The blues progression has a distinctive form in lyrics, phrase, chord structure, and duration. In its basic form, it is predominantly based on the I-IV-V chords of a key.

Indo jazz is a hybrid musical genre consisting of jazz, classical and Indian influences. The structure and patterns would be based on Indian music with the improvisation typical to jazz overlaid. The term might be comparatively recent, but the concept dates at least to the mid-1950s. Musicians including John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef and others showed Indian influences.

Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.

Gypsy jazz (also known as gypsy swing or hot club jazz) is a style of jazz music often said to have been started by guitarist Jean "Django" Reinhardt in the 1930s. Because its origins are largely in France it is often called by the French name, "jazz manouche", or alternatively, "manouche jazz", even in English language sources. The term is now commonly used for this style of music.

Free jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music of free jazz composers varied widely, a common feature was dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz that had developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Free jazz musicians attempted to alter, extend, or break down jazz convention, often by discarding fixed chord changes or tempos. While usually considered avant-garde, free jazz has also been described as an attempt to return jazz to its primitive, often religious, roots and emphasis on collective improvisation.

Folk jazz is a broad term for music that pairs traditional folk music with elements of jazz, usually featuring richly texturized songs.

Dixieland music or New Orleans jazz, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or early jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s. Well-known jazz standard songs from the Dixieland era, such as "Basin Street Blues" and "When the Saints Go Marching In", are known even to non-jazz fans. With its beginnings in riverboat jazz, Dixieland progressed to Chicago-style jazz or hot jazz as developed by Louis Armstrong and others. The latter was also a transition and combination of 2-beat to 4-beat, introducing swing in its earliest form. "Chicago style" musicians used the string bass instead of the tuba and the guitar instead of the banjo to play a faster-paced, swinging style that emphasized solos. Hot jazz or Chicago-style jazz was also the current original music that began the Lindy Hop dance craze as it developed in Harlem.

In the wake of jazz fusion's decline in the mid-1970s, jazz artists who continued to seek wider audiences began incorporating a variety of popular sounds into their music, forming a group of accessible styles that became known as crossover jazz. Influential saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr. incorporated elements of funk and R&B into a sound based in hard bop, while singer Al Jarreau blurred the lines between jazz, pop, and soul. Other artists, such as The Rippingtons and Spyro Gyra, injected their pop-flavored instrumentals with Latin rhythms and electronic keyboards. Jamaican saxophonists Tommy McCook and Rolando Alphonso and keyboardist Jackie Mittoo fused roots reggae rhythm with jazz harmonies and extended improvisation. Unlike the related genre smooth jazz, crossover jazz retains an emphasis on improvisation but attempts to make that improvisation commercially successful by couching it in a variety of marketable formats.

Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz music that arose following the Second World War. It is characterized by its relaxed tempos and lighter tone, in contrast to the bebop style. Cool jazz often employs formal arrangements and incorporates elements of classical music.

Chamber jazz is a genre of jazz involving small, acoustic-based ensembles where group interplay is important. It is influenced aesthetically by musical neoclassicism and is often influenced by classical forms of Western music as well as non-Western music or culture. That stated in many cases the influence is traditional Celtic music, Central European folk music, or Latin American music instead. The genre primarily began in Europe so significant neoclassical composers of Europe, like Igor Stravinsky, are important in it. The German ECM Records also played a role in it beginning in the late 1960s. It is also noted for using instruments not normally associated with jazz. For example, chamber jazz will make use of the oboe, mandolin, cymbalum, or the tabla.

Cape jazz (more often written Cape Jazz) is a genre of jazz that is performed in the very southern part of Africa, the name being a reference to Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Jazz is similar to the popular music style known as marabi, though more improvisational in character. Where marabi is a piano jazz style, Cape Jazz in the beginning featured (though not exclusively) instruments that can be carried in a street parade, such as brass instruments, banjos, guitars and percussion instruments.

Bossa nova is a genre of Brazilian music, which developed and was popularized in the 1950s and '60s and is today one of the best-known Brazilian music genres abroad. The phrase bossa nova means literally "new trend" (Portuguese pronunciation:  ( listen)). A lyrical fusion of samba and jazz, bossa nova acquired a large following in the 1960s, initially among young musicians and college students.

Bebop or bop is a style of jazz characterized by a fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure and occasional references to the melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. This style of jazz ultimately became synonymous with modern jazz, when both categories reached a certain final maturity in the 1960s.

The Azerbaijani jazz (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan cazı) is a popular variety of jazz, widespread in Azerbaijan. It covers a broad range of styles (traditional, post-pop, fusion, free flexion) and often features a blend with traditional Azeri music. Among modern famed Azeri jazz musicians are Aziza Mustafazadeh, who was influenced by Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, Isfar Sarabski, Salman Gambarov and Rain Sultanov.

Avant-garde jazz (also known as avant-jazz) is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the 1950s and developed through the 1960s.

Asian-American jazz is a musical movement in the United States begun in the 20th century by Asian-American jazz musicians.

Acid jazz, also known as club jazz, is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, soul, funk and disco. Acid jazz originated in the London club scene of the mid-1980s in the rare groove movement and spread to the US, Japan, Eastern Europe and Brazil. Major acts included Brand New Heavies, Incognito, Us3 and Jamiroquai from the UK and A Tribe Called Quest, Buckshot LeFonque and Digable Planets from the US. The rise of electronic club music in the mid to late 1990s led to a decline in interest, and in the twenty-first century, the movement became indistinct as a genre. Many acts that might have been defined as acid jazz are now seen as jazz-funk, neo soul or jazz rap.

Women in jazz have contributed throughout the many eras of jazz history, both as performers and as composers, songwriters and bandleaders. While women such as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were famous for their jazz singing, women have achieved much less recognition for their contributions as composers, bandleaders and instrumental performers. Other notable jazz women include piano player Lil Hardin Armstrong and jazz songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields.

Vocal jazz or jazz singing is an instrumental approach to the voice, where the singer can match the instruments in their stylistic approach to the lyrics, improvised or otherwise, or through scat singing; that is, the use of non-morphemic syllables to imitate the sound of instruments.

Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. The earliest references to jazz performance using the violin as a solo instrument was during the first decades of the 20th century. Early jazz violinists included Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; Claude "Fiddler" Williams, who played with Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy. Joe Venuti was best known for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Georgie Stoll was a jazz violinist who became an orchestra leader and film music director.

Jazz piano is a collective term for the techniques pianists use when playing jazz. The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception, in both solo and ensemble settings. Its role is multifaceted due largely to the instrument's combined melodic and harmonic capabilities. For this reason it is an important tool of jazz musicians and composers for teaching and learning jazz theory and set arrangement, regardless of their main instrument. (By extension the phrase 'jazz piano' can refer to similar techniques on any keyboard instrument.)

The term jazz guitar may refer to either a type of guitar or to the variety of guitar playing styles used in the various genres which are commonly termed "jazz". The jazz-type guitar was born as a result of using electric amplification to increase the volume of conventional acoustic guitars.

Jazz drumming is the art of playing percussion (predominantly the drum set, which includes a variety of drums and cymbals) in jazz styles ranging from 1910s-style Dixieland jazz to 1970s-era jazz fusion and 1980s-era Latin jazz. The techniques and instrumentation of this type of performance have evolved over several periods, influenced by jazz at large and the individual drummers within it. Stylistically, this aspect of performance was shaped by its starting place, New Orleans, as well as numerous other regions of the world, including other parts of the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa.

Jazz bass is the use of the double bass or bass guitar, to improvise accompaniment ("comping") and solos in a jazz or jazz fusion style. Players began using the double bass in jazz in the 1890s, to supply the low-pitched walking basslines that outlined the harmony of the music. From the 1920s and 1930s Swing and big band era, through Bebop and Hard Bop, to the 1960s-era "free jazz" movement, the resonant, woody sound of the double bass anchored everything from small jazz combos to large jazz groups.

In jazz and related musical styles, the term swing is used to describe the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or "groove" created by the musical interaction between the performers, especially when the music creates a "visceral response" such as feet-tapping or head-nodding (see pulse). The term "swing" is also used to refer to several other related jazz concepts including the swung note (a "lilting" rhythm of unequal notes) and the genre of swing, a jazz style which originated in the 1930s.

In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing is a difficult technique that requires singers with the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms using the voice as an instrument rather than a speaking medium.

A jam session is a musical event, process, or activity where musicians play (i.e. "jam") by improvising without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements. Jam sessions are often used by musicians to develop new material (music), find suitable arrangements, or simply as a social gathering and communal practice session. Jam sessions may be based upon existing songs or forms, may be loosely based on an agreed chord progression or chart suggested by one participant, or may be wholly improvisational. Jam sessions can range from very loose gatherings of amateurs to evenings where a jam session coordinator acts as a "gatekeeper" to ensure that only appropriate-level performers take the stage, to sophisticated improvised recording sessions by professionals which are intended to be edited and released to the public.

Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on chord changes in classical music, and many other kinds of music. One definition is a "performance given extempore without planning or preparation." Another definition is to "play or sing (music) extemporaneously, by inventing variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies."

A big band is a type of musical ensemble that originated in the United States and is associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of percussion, brass, and woodwind instruments totalling approximately 12 to 25 musicians. The terms jazz band, jazz ensemble, jazz orchestra, stage band, society band, and dance band may describe this type of ensemble in particular contexts.

A jazz band (jazz ensemble or jazz combo) is a musical ensemble that plays jazz music. Jazz bands vary in the quantity of its members and the style of jazz that they play but it is common to find a jazz band made up of a rhythm section and a horn section.

The origin of the word jazz is one of the most sought-after word origins in modern American English. The word's intrinsic interest – the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century – has resulted in considerable research and its history is well documented. As discussed in more detail below, jazz began as a West Coast slang term around 1912, the meaning of which varied but it did not initially refer to music. Jazz came to mean jazz music in Chicago around 1915.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to jazz:

Quinn Brown Wilson (December 26, 1908, Chicago, Illinois - June 14, 1978, Evanston, Illinois) was an American jazz bassist and tubist.

Martin Taxt (born 18 January 1981 in Trondheim, Norway) is a Norwegian jazz musician (tuba), known from a variety of jazz bands like Koboku Senjû, Microtub, Muringa, Music for a While and Trondheim Jazz Orchestra.

Joe Tarto (February 22, 1902 - August 24, 1986) was an American jazz tubist and bassist.

He is most well known for being part of The Brazz Brothers. He was also one of the founders Ytre Suløens Jass Ensemble in 1973, where he played for 17 years.

Bob Stewart (born February 3, 1945 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota), is an American tuba player. He received his Bachelor of Music Education degree from the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts and his Masters in Education from Lehman College Graduate School. Stewart taught music in Pennsylvania public schools and at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City. He is now a professor at the Juilliard School and is a "Distinguished Lecturer" at Lehman College.

Jonathan "Jon" Sass (born 1961 in New York, USA) is a jazz tuba player and composer. He studied at Boston University and has lived in Vienna since 1989.

Singleton Palmer (November 13, 1913, St. Louis, Missouri – March 8, 1993, St. Louis) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist and bandleader.

Ralph Winston Morris (born 1941 in Barnwell, South Carolina) is an American tubist. He serves as a professor of tuba and euphonium at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tennessee. Morris is editor of The Tuba Source Book and the Euphonium Source Book.

Heiða Karine Jóhannesdóttir Mobeck (born 7 May 1987 in Trondheim, Norway) is a Norwegian Jazz musician (tuba and bass guitar), daughter of the artists Kari Elise Mobeck (Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder) and Jóhannes B. Sigurjónsson (NTNU), married 23 June 2011 to the drummer and vibraphonist Hans Hulbækmo, and known for playing in a series of bands and recordings.

Martin Abraham, better known as Chink Martin (June 10, 1886, New Orleans - January 7, 1981, New Orleans) was an American jazz tubist.

Kristoffer Lo (born 19 February 1985 in Moss, Norway) is a Norwegian jazz musician (tuba, flugabone, guitar) and composer.

Wilford F. (Min) Leibrook (January 18, 1903 - June 8, 1943) was an American jazz tubist and bassist.

Jim Lanigan (January 30, 1902 - April 9, 1983) was an American jazz bassist and tubist.

Dick Lammi (January 15, 1909 – November 29, 1969) was an American jazz tubist and bassist associated with Dixieland jazz.

Anthony "Tuba Fats" Lacen (September 15, 1950 – January 11, 2004) was a jazz tubist and band leader. Tuba Fats was New Orleans' most famous tuba player and played traditional New Orleans jazz and blues for over 40 years.

Andrew Dewey Kirk (May 28, 1898 – December 11, 1992) was a jazz saxophonist and tubist best known as a bandleader of the "Twelve Clouds of Joy", popular during the swing era.

John Kirby (December 31, 1908 – June 14, 1952), was a jazz double-bassist who also played trombone and tuba.

Louis Keppard (February 2, 1888, New Orleans – February 18, 1986, New Orleans) was an American jazz guitarist and tubist. He was the brother of Freddie Keppard.

Kirk Joseph (born 1961) is a jazz sousaphone player from New Orleans, Louisiana. The son of trombonist Waldren "Frog" Joseph, Kirk Joseph began playing the sousaphone while a student at Andrew Bell Middle School, and took part in his first professional gig at the age of fifteen when his brother Charles invited him to play a funeral with the Majestic Band.

Howard Lewis Johnson (born August 7, 1941) in Montgomery, Alabama, is an American jazz musician known mainly for his work on tuba and baritone saxophone, although he also plays the bass clarinet, trumpet and other reed instruments.

Allan Phillip Jaffe (April 24, 1935, Pottsville, Pennsylvania - March 10, 1987, New Orleans) was an American jazz tubist and the entrepreneur who developed Preservation Hall into a New Orleans jazz tradition.

Line Horntveth (born 26 November 1974 in Tønsberg, Norway) is a Norwegian musician (tuba, flute and vocals), the sister of the musicians Martin and Lars Horntveth, married to the upright bassist Bjørn Holm, and known from a series of recordings within Jaga Jazzist.

Daniel Herskedal (born 2 April 1982 in Molde, Norway) is a Norwegian Jazz musician (tuba), known from playing with numerous ensembles and participating in several recordings. Herskedal is regarded as one of the most talented jazz tubaists in Norway. He is also combining several genres.

Lars Andreas Haug (born 12 April 1975 in Frogner, Norway) is a Norwegian Jazz musician (tuba), known from a variety of jazz groups and recordings.

William Girsback, better known as Squire Gersh (May 13, 1913 in San Francisco - April 27, 1983) was an American jazz tubist and double-bassist.

David Gald (born 10 July 1968 in Stryn, Norway) is a Norwegian Jazz musician (tuba), known for collaborations with such musicians as Bjørn Alterhaug, Arve Henriksen and Trygve Seim and on a series of album releases.

George Murphy "Pops" Foster (May 19, 1892 – October 29, 1969) was a jazz musician best known for his vigorous slap bass playing of the string bass. He also played the tuba and trumpet professionally.

Raymond Allen Draper (August 3, 1940, New York City – November 1, 1982) was an American hard bop tuba player.

June Lawrence Cole (1903, Springfield, Ohio – October 10, 1960, New York City) was an American jazz bassist, tubist, and singer.

Don Butterfield (April 1, 1923 – November 27, 2006) was an American jazz and classical tuba player.

Joe Bishop (November 27, 1907, Monticello, Arkansas - May 12, 1976, Houston, Texas) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist and composer.

Bill Benford (c. 1902 – before 1994) was an American jazz double-bassist and tubist. He was born in Charleston, West Virginia.

Art Baron (né Arthur John Baron; born 5 January 1950 Bridgeport, Connecticut) is an American jazz trombonist. He also plays didgeridoo, conch shell, penny-whistle, alto and bass recorder, and tuba.

David 'Dave' W Bargeron (born September 6, 1942 in Athol, Massachusetts) is an American trombonist and tuba player most famous for playing with the jazz-rock group Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

John William Barber (May 21, 1920 – June 18, 2007), known as Bill Barber or Billy Barber, is considered by many to be the first person to play tuba in modern jazz. He is best known for his work with Miles Davis on albums such as Birth of the Cool, Sketches of Spain and Miles Ahead.

Leonard "Red" Balaban (December 22, 1929 - December 29, 2013) was an American jazz tubist and sousaphonist. He also played banjo, stand-up bass, slide trombone, ukelele and rhythm guitar.

Hayes Alvis (May 1, 1907 – December 29, 1972) was an American jazz bassist and tubist.

Tom Abbs (born 1972) is an American multi-instrumentalist and filmmaker. He works primarily in the fields of jazz, free jazz, and free improvisation, and plays double bass, tuba, cello, violin, didgeridoo, and wooden flute, often playing several of these instruments simultaneously.

The bass trumpet is a type of low trumpet which was first developed during the 1820s in Germany. It is usually pitched in 8' C or 9' B♭ today, but is sometimes built in E♭ and is treated as a transposing instrument sounding either an octave, a sixth or a ninth lower than written, depending on the pitch of the instrument. Having valves and the same tubing length, the bass trumpet is quite similar to the valve trombone, although the bass trumpet has a harder, more metallic tone. Certain modern manufacturers offering 'valve trombones' and 'bass trumpets' use the same tubing, valves, and bell, in different configurations - in these cases the bass trumpet is virtually identical to the valve trombone.

Mike Zwerin (May 18, 1930 – April 2, 2010) was an American cool jazz musician and author. Zwerin as a musician played the trombone and bass trumpet within various jazz ensembles. He was active within the jazz and progressive jazz musical community as a session musician. Zwerin found a way to pursue both his interests as an author living in New York, where he was born, and his passion for music by taking positions as a broadcaster, and other journalistic and media positions while maintaining his musical career as well. Although he gained notoriety for his writing, he may be best known to the public for his work with Miles Davis in 1948 as part of his Birth of the Cool band. Additionally, Zwerin also worked with Maynard Ferguson, Claude Thornhill, Archie Shepp and Bill Russo, among many others.

A jazz vibraharpist, drummer, percussionist, arranger, big band leader, film, television, and classical concert composer, inventor, author, and educator.

Melvin Howard Tormé (September 13, 1925 – June 5, 1999), nicknamed The Velvet Fog, was an American musician, best known as a singer of jazz standards. He was also a jazz composer and arranger, drummer, and actor in radio, film, and television, and the author of five books. He composed the music for the classic holiday song "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire") and co-wrote the lyrics with Bob Wells.

Toots Thielemans (born Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans on 29 April 1922, Brussels, Belgium) is a Belgian jazz musician. He is known for his guitar and harmonica playing, as well as his whistling skills.

John Douglas Surman (born 30 August 1944) is an English jazz saxophone, bass clarinet and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music as a basis. He has also composed and performed much music for dance performances and film soundtracks.

Helge Schneider (born 30 August 1955 in Mülheim an der Ruhr) is a German comedian, jazz musician and multi-instrumentalist, author, film and theatre director, and actor. Schneider's works are an unconventional mixture of horseplay humor, parody, and jazz-influenced music. They involve spontaneity and improvisation as important elements.

Adrian Francis Rollini (June 28, 1903 – May 15, 1956) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played the bass saxophone, piano, vibraphone, and many other instruments. Rollini is also known for introducing the goofus in jazz music. As leader, his major recordings included "You've Got Everything" (1933), "Savage Serenade" (1933) and "Got The Jitters (1934) on Banner, Perfect, Melotone, Romeo, Oriole, "A Thousand Good Nights" (1934) on Vocalion, "Davenport Blues" (1934) on Decca, "Nothing But Notes", "Tap Room Swing", "Jitters", "Riverboat Shuffle" (1934) on Decca, and "Small Fry" (1938) on Columbia.

Daniel Richmond (born August 1, 1984) is a professional ice hockey defenseman for Adler Mannheim of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL). He is the son of retired NHL defenseman, Steve Richmond.

The melodica, also known as the pianica, blow-organ, key-flute or key-ute, is a free-reed instrument similar to the melodion and harmonica. It has a musical keyboard on top, and is played by blowing air through a mouthpiece that fits into a hole in the side of the instrument. Pressing a key opens a hole, allowing air to flow through a reed. The keyboard is usually two or three octaves long. Melodicas are small, light, and portable. They are popular in music education, especially in Asia.

Depends on configuration: Right-hand manual

Hermeto Pascoal (born June 22, 1936) is a Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist. He was born in Lagoa da Canoa, Alagoas, Brazil. Pascoal is a greatly beloved musical figure in the history of Brazilian music, known for his abilities at orchestration and improvisation, as well as being a record producer and contributor to many other Brazilian and international albums.

Ray Willis Nance (December 10, 1913, Chicago – January 28, 1976, New York City) was a jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer. He is best remembered for his long association with band leader Duke Ellington.

A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater (including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles); struck, scraped or rubbed by hand; or struck against another similar instrument. The percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments, following the human voice.

A gong (Chinese: 鑼; pinyin: luó; Indonesian or Javanese: gong; Malay: gong ) is an African, East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat, circular metal disc which is hit with a mallet. It originated in China and later spread to Southeast Asia, and it can also be used in the percussion section of Western symphony orchestra.

The clarinet /ˌklærəˈnɛt/ is a musical-instrument family belonging to the group known as the woodwind instruments. It has a single-reed mouthpiece, a straight cylindrical tube with an almost cylindrical bore, and a flared bell. A person who plays a clarinet is called a clarinetist (sometimes spelled clarinettist).

Wind, woodwind

Wind, woodwind

The nose flute is a popular musical instrument played in Polynesia and the Pacific Rim countries. Other versions are found in Africa, China, and India.

The flute is a family of a musical instrument in the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel–Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones.

Daryl Hayott (b. 5 November in São Paulo, Brazil), is an artist and musician who easily plays multiple instruments. He is a drummer, bassist, percussionist, keyboardist and a trumpet player.

Edward Brian "Tubby" Hayes (30 January 1935 – 8 June 1973) was an English jazz multi-instrumentalist, best known for his tenor saxophone playing in groups with fellow sax player Ronnie Scott and with trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar.

Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.

Tyree Glenn, born William Tyree Glenn, (November 23, 1912, Corsicana, Texas – May 18, 1974, Englewood, New Jersey) was an American trombone player.

Johnny Frigo (December 27, 1916 – July 4, 2007) was an American jazz violinist and bassist.

Brent Fischer (born July 13, 1964) is an American composer, arranger, bandleader, bass guitarist and percussionist. The son of noted composer, arranger, and keyboardist Clare Fischer, Brent made his recording debut with his father's Latin jazz combo, Salsa Picante, at the age of sixteen, thus inaugurating a more than 30-year-long professional association between the two. Initially confined to performing credits, his input gradually expanded, until, by 2004, Fischer had assumed not merely a large share of the elder Fischer's arranging workload, but also active leadership of the various working ensembles hitherto directed by his father; moreover, since 2005, Brent Fischer has produced all of his father's albums, starting with Introspectivo. The first two of these released after Dr. Fischer's death, ¡Ritmo! and Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest, each won Grammys; the former in 2013 for Best Latin Jazz Album, the latter in 2014 for Best Instrumental Composition.

Victor Stanley Feldman (April 7, 1934 – May 12, 1987) was a British jazz musician, best known as a pianist and percussionist.

Robert Martin "Bob" Enevoldsen (11 September 1920 Montana – 19 November 2005 Woodland Hills, California) was a West Coast jazz tenor saxophonist and valve trombonist born in Billings, Montana, probably best known for his work with Marty Paich. He also did sessions with Art Pepper and Shorty Rogers, and later extensively played with Shelly Manne. It is a little-known fact that Enevoldsen was a highly skilled arranger and did most of the arranging work for Steve Allen's Westinghouse show in the early 60's. During the 1970s he gigged sometimes with Gerry Mulligan also, among others.

Don Ellis (July 25, 1934 – December 17, 1978) was an American jazz trumpeter, drummer, composer and bandleader. He is best known for his extensive musical experimentation, particularly in the area of unusual time signatures. Later in his life he worked as a film composer, among other works contributing a score to 1971's The French Connection and 1973's The Seven-Ups.

Eric Allan Dolphy, Jr. (June 20, 1928 – June 29, 1964) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, flautist, and bass clarinetist. On a few occasions, he also played the clarinet and piccolo. Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence in the 1960s. He was one of the first important bass clarinet soloists in jazz, extended the vocabulary and boundaries of the alto saxophone, and was among the earliest significant jazz flute soloists.

Jack DeJohnette (born August 9, 1942) is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer.

Known professionally as Ray Charles, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and composer.

Ron Carter (born Ronald Levin Carter, May 4, 1937) is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that instrument. He was elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2012.

John Arthur "Jaki" Byard (June 15, 1922 – February 11, 1999) was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger who also played tenor and alto saxophones, among several other instruments. He was known for his eclectic style, incorporating everything from ragtime and stride to free jazz.

Lawrence Benjamin "Larry" Bunker (November 4, 1928 – March 8, 2005) was an American jazz drummer, vibraphonist, and percussionist. A member of the Bill Evans Trio in the mid-1960s, he also played timpani with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.

Dewells "Dee" Barton, Jr. (18 September 1937 — 3 December 2001) was an American jazz trombonist, big band drummer, and prolific composer for big band and motion pictures.

Mose John Allison, Jr. (born November 11, 1927) is an American jazz blues pianist, singer and songwriter.

Zeena Parkins is an American harpist active in rock music, free improvisation and jazz. Parkins plays standard harps, as well as several custom-made one-of-a kind electric harps; she also plays piano and accordion. She is currently a guest faculty member for composition courses at Mills College.

Corky Hale (born Merrilyn Hecht in Freeport, Illinois on July 3, 1936) has been a working jazz musician since the late 1950s. As an in-demand session player, she has traveled across the United States and throughout Europe, playing harp, piano and flute, and singing. In addition to her musical resume, Hale has been a theater producer, political activist, a restaurateur and even the owner of a once-famous Los Angeles women's clothing store, "Corky Hale."

Alice Coltrane, née McLeod (August 27, 1937 – January 12, 2007) was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, and composer, and the second wife of jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. One of the few harpists in the history of jazz, she recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! Records and Universal Distribution.

Dorothy Jeanne Thompson (August 6, 1930 – April 13, 1986), better known as Dorothy Ashby, was an American jazz harpist and composer.

Frédéric Yonnet (born 1973) is a French musician, producer and recording artist who is best known for his use of the harmonica as a lead in jazz, R&B, funk, gospel and hip-hop influenced music. His ability to play chromatic scales on a diatonic harmonica gives him access to twice as many notes as the instrument is designed to deliver.

Toots Thielemans (born Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans on 29 April 1922, Brussels, Belgium) is a Belgian jazz musician. He is known for his guitar and harmonica playing, as well as his whistling skills.

Eddie Shu (né Edward Shulman; 18 March 1918 New York City — 4 July 1986 St. Petersburg, Florida, though he lived in Tampa) was an American swing and jazz multi-instrumentalist with high proficiency on tenor and alto saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, harmonica, and accordion. He also was a popular comedic ventriloquist. He is more known for his tenor playing, but he maintained, performed and recorded using his other talents throughout his jazz career.

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (/məˈθiːni/ mə-THEE-nee; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.

John McLaughlin (born 4 January 1942 in Doncaster, West Riding of Yorkshire, England), also known as Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, is an English guitarist, bandleader and composer. His music includes many genres of jazz which he coupled with elements of rock, Indian classical music, Western classical music, flamenco and blues to become one of the pioneering figures in fusion.

Adrian Belew (born Robert Steven Belew, December 15, 1949) is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist primarily known as a guitarist and singer, Belew is noted for his unusual, impressionistic approach to guitar playing (which frequently involves sounds more akin to animals and machines than to standard instrumental tones). He is perhaps best known for his work as a guitarist and vocalist of the progressive rock group King Crimson from 1981 to 2009.

Julius Watkins (October 10, 1921 – April 4, 1977) was an American jazz musician, and one of the first French horn players in jazz. He won the Down Beat critics poll in 1960 and 1961 for "miscellaneous instrument" with French horn named as the instrument.

Tom Varner (born June 17, 1957 in Morristown, New Jersey, United States) is an American jazz horn (French horn) player and composer.

Willie Ruff (born September 1, 1931) is an American jazz musician, specializing in the French horn and double bass.

Addison Collins, Jr. (April 17, 1927 – 1976) was an American French horn player.

John Clark is an American jazz horn player and composer.

Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flautist.

Dave Valentin (born April 29, 1952, in New York City) is a jazz flutist.

Jeremy Steig (born September 23, 1942) is an American jazz flutist.

Leslie Spann, Jr. (May 23, 1932 - January 24, 1989) was an American jazz guitarist and flautist.

Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank, Jr. (May 27, 1926 – April 2, 2009) was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and throughout the decade worked in various small jazz combos. He spent the 1960s as a first-call studio musician in Hollywood. In the 1970s and 1980s he performed regularly with the L. A. Four. Shank ultimately abandoned the flute to focus exclusively on playing jazz on the alto saxophone. He also recorded on tenor and baritone sax. He is also well known for the alto flute solo on the song "California Dreamin'" recorded by The Mamas & the Papas in 1965.

Samuel Carthorne Rivers (September 25, 1923 – December 26, 2011) was an American jazz musician and composer. He performed on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano.

James W. Newton (born May 1, 1953, Los Angeles, California, United States) is an American jazz and classical flautist, composer, and conductor.

Samuel "Sam" Most (December 16, 1930 – June 13, 2013) was an American jazz flautist and tenor saxophonist, based in Los Angeles. He was "probably the first great jazz flutist," according to jazz historian Leonard Feather.

James Moody (March 26, 1925 – December 9, 2010) was an American jazz saxophone and flute player and occasional vocalist, playing predominantly in the bebop and hard bop styles.

Bill McBirnie is a jazz and Latin flutist from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Herbert Jay Solomon (April 16, 1930 – July 1, 2003), known by his stage name Herbie Mann, was an American jazz flautist and important early practitioner of world music. Early in his career, he also played tenor saxophone and clarinet (including bass clarinet), but Mann was among the first jazz musicians to specialize on the flute. His most popular single was "Hijack", which was a Billboard number-one dance hit for three weeks in 1975.

Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston; October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and prominent member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community following his conversion to Islam in 1950.

Hubert Laws (born November 10, 1939) is an American flutist and saxophonist with a career spanning over 40 years in jazz, classical, and other music genres. After Eric Dolphy and alongside Herbie Mann, Laws is probably the most recognized and respected jazz flutist. Laws is one of the few classical artists who has also mastered jazz, pop, and rhythm-and-blues genres, moving effortlessly from one repertory to another.

Morris "Moe" Koffman, OC (December 28, 1928 – March 28, 2001) was a Canadian jazz musician and composer. He played the flute, soprano, alto and tenor saxophone and clarinet. Although some jazz purists did not appreciate his sensitivity to popular tastes, his ability to adapt to changing styles reflected his technical skill as a musician and diverse musical interests.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk (August 7, 1935 – December 5, 1977) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute and many other instruments. He was renowned for his onstage vitality, during which virtuoso improvisation was accompanied by comic banter, political ranting, and the ability to play several instruments simultaneously.

Barbara Ann ("Bobbi") Humphrey (born April 25, 1950) is an American jazz flutist and singer who plays fusion, jazz-funk and soul-jazz styles. Bobbi Humphrey has performed for audiences around the world.

Paul Horn (March 17, 1930 – June 29, 2014) was an American jazz flautist, and an early pioneer of New Age music.

Peter Guidi (born 1949) is a jazz saxophonist and jazz flutist whose main instruments are flute, alto and bass flute, alto and soprano saxophones.

Joseph Carl Firrantello (December 16, 1937 – January 10, 1986), known as Joe Farrell, was an American jazz saxophonist and flautist. He is best known for a series of albums under his own name on the CTI record label and for playing in the initial incarnation of Chick Corea's Return to Forever.

Donald Vernon "Don" Burrows AO MBE (born 8 August 1928) is an Australian jazz and swing musician, a multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing the clarinet but also the saxophone and flute. For his contribution to the arts, Burrows has been awarded a Handel Music Prize and had a supper club named for him at The Regent Hotel (now the Four Seasons Hotel) in Sydney, Australia.

Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC (14 January 1930 – 18 September 2014) was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards.

Woody Herman Shaw, Jr. (December 24, 1944 – May 10, 1989) was an American virtuoso trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, composer and band leader, described by NPR Music as "the last great trumpet innovator".

Oiseth have had a number of appearances in both Norway, South Africa and Pakistan, and was hired as trumpeter in the only professional big band in Scandinavia, Bohuslan Big Band.

Dmitri Matheny (b. December 25, 1965, Nashville, Tennessee) is an American jazz flugelhornist, composer, educator, producer and recording artist. Matheny, as a performer, is known for his lyrical style and warm tone.

Charles Frank "Chuck" Mangione (/mændʒiˈoʊni/; born November 29, 1940) is an American flugelhorn player, trumpeter and composer.

Per Jørgensen (born 9 September 1952 in Bergen, Norway) is a Norwegian multi-instrumentalist with trumpet as his main instrument, also known for his resilient vocal contributions, in collaboration with Dag Arnesen, Knut Kristiansen, Alex Riel, Jon Christensen, Jon Balke, Audun Kleive, Jan Gunnar Hoff, Marilyn Mazur, Nils Petter Molvær, Bugge Wesseltoft and Terje Isungset among others.

Paolo Fresu (born February 10, 1961) is an Italian jazz trumpet and flugelhorn player, as well as a composer and arranger of music.

Arthur Stewart "Art" Farmer (August 21, 1928 – October 4, 1999) was an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhorn player. He also played flumpet, a trumpet–flugelhorn combination specially designed for him. He and his identical twin brother, double bassist Addison Farmer, started playing professionally while in high school. Art gained greater attention after the release of a recording of his composition "Farmer's Market" in 1952. He subsequently moved from Los Angeles to New York, where he performed and recorded with musicians such as Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Gigi Gryce and became known principally as a bebop player.

Larry Stoops, better known as "Steamboat Willie" (born 1950) is a veteran musician of Dixieland, jazz and ragtime music, specializing in the early twentieth century era of the genres. He and his band perform nightly at Musical Legends Park, in the French Quarter of New Orleans, at the Cafe Beignet.

Chris Tyle is a traditional jazz (i.e., dixieland) musician performing on cornet, trumpet and drums.

Rex William Stewart (22 February 1907 – 7 September 1967) was an American jazz cornetist best remembered for his work with the Duke Ellington orchestra.

Jeff Hughes is an American traditional jazz cornet player.

Robert Leo "Bobby" Hackett (January 31, 1915 – June 7, 1976) was an American jazz musician who played trumpet, cornet and guitar with the bands of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Hackett is probably best known for being the featured soloist on some of the Jackie Gleason mood music albums during the 1950s.

Nathaniel "Nat" Adderley (November 25, 1931 – January 2, 2000) was an American jazz cornet and trumpet player who played in the hard bop and soul jazz genres. He was the brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, whom he remained very close to in his career but whose shadow Nat followed in for most of his life.

Putte Wickman (10 September 1924 – 14 February 2006) was one of the world's leading jazz clarinetists.

William Overton Smith (born September 22, 1926), better known as Bill Smith, is a U.S. clarinetist and composer. He has worked extensively in modern classical music, Third Stream and jazz, and is perhaps best known for having played with pianist Dave Brubeck intermittently from the 1940s to the early 2000s. His classical compositions are credited under his full name or William O. Smith.

Anthony David Leighton "Tony" Scott (21 June 1944 – 19 August 2012) was an English film director and producer. His films come from a broad range of genres, including the action drama Top Gun (1986), action comedy Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), auto racing film Days of Thunder (1990), action comedy The Last Boy Scout (1991), romantic dark comedy crime film True Romance (1993), submarine action film Crimson Tide (1995), psychological thriller The Fan (1996), spy thriller Enemy of the State (1998), spy film Spy Game (2001), action thriller Man on Fire (2004), sci-fi action thriller Déjà Vu (2006), thriller The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), and the action thriller Unstoppable (2010).

Charles Ellsworth Russell, much better known by his nickname Pee Wee Russell (March 27, 1906 – February 15, 1969), was a jazz musician. Early in his career he played clarinet and saxophones, but he eventually focused solely on clarinet.

Russell Procope (August 11, 1908 – January 21, 1981), an American clarinettist and alto saxophonist, was known best for his long tenure in the reed section of Duke Ellington's orchestra, where he was one of its two signature clarinet soloists.

Isador Simon "Sid" Phillips (June 14, 1907 – May 24, 1973) was an English jazz clarinetist, bandleader, and arranger.

Ken Peplowski (born May 23, 1959) is a jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist born in Cleveland, Ohio, known primarily for playing in the swing music idiom. He is sometimes compared to Benny Goodman in terms of tone and virtuosity. For over a decade, Peplowski recorded for Concord Records; his most recent albums have appeared on the Nagel-Heyer Records record label.

Joseph P. "Joe" Muranyi (January 14, 1928 – April 20, 2012) was a Hungarian-American jazz clarinetist, producer and critic.

Michael Marcus (August 25, 1952) is an American jazz clarinetist/multi-woodwind player. He also plays A clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, as well as tenor, baritone, bass, C melody, straight alto (Stritch) and Saxello saxophones. He is also a composer and arranger.

Michael Andrew "Peanuts" Hucko (April 7, 1918 - June 19, 2003) was an American big band musician. His primary instrument was the clarinet but he sometimes played various saxophones.

Woodrow Charles "Woody" Herman (May 16, 1913 – October 29, 1987) was an American jazz clarinetist, alto and soprano saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading various groups called "The Herd", Herman was one of the most popular of the 1930s and 1940s bandleaders. His bands often played music that was experimental for its time. He was a featured halftime performer for Super Bowl VII.

Jimmy Hamilton (May 25, 1917 – September 20, 1994) was an American jazz clarinetist, tenor saxophonist, arranger, composer, and music educator, best known for his twenty-five years with Duke Ellington.

Edmond Hall (May 15, 1901 – February 11, 1967) was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader.

Victor Goines (born 1961 in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a jazz saxophonist and clarinetist and received his Masters in Music at Virginia Commonwealth University. Goines has served as the director of jazz studies and professor for the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University since 2008. He previously served as first artistic director of the Juilliard School's jazz program from 2000 until 2007. He has been a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Wynton Marsalis Septet since 1993. Goines has collaborated with such artists as Terence Blanchard, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, Bob Dylan, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Green, Lionel Hampton, Freddie Hubbard, B.B. King, Lenny Kravitz, Branford Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, James Moody, Dianne Reeves, Marcus Roberts, Diana Ross, Eric Clapton, Wycliff Gordon and Stevie Wonder. He has performed on more than 20 recordings, including the soundtracks for three Ken Burns documentaries and the films Undercover Blues, When Night Falls on Manhattan, and Rosewood. He has composed more than 75 original works, including Jazz at Lincoln Center and ASCAP commissions. He has also served on the faculties of Florida A&M University, University of New Orleans, Loyola University of New Orleans, and Xavier University of Louisiana. Goines is an artist for Buffet Crampon and Vandoren. He is a member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and leads his ensemble the Victor Goines Quartet.

Pete Fountain (born Pierre Dewey LaFontaine, Jr., July 3, 1930), is a world-renowned American clarinetist based in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He has played jazz, Dixieland, Pop Jazz, Honky-Tonk Jazz, Pop, and Creole music.

Irving Fazola (December 10, 1912 – March 20, 1949) was an American jazz clarinetist.

Johnny Dodds (April 12, 1892 – August 8, 1940) was an American New Orleans based jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist, best known for his recordings under his own name and with bands such as those of Joe "King" Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Lovie Austin and Louis Armstrong. Dodds (pronounced "dots") was also the older brother of drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds. The pair worked together in the New Orleans Bootblacks in 1926.

Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco (February 17, 1923 – December 24, 2014) was an American jazz clarinet player.

Kenny Davern (January 7, 1935 – December 12, 2006), born John Kenneth Davern, was a jazz clarinetist.

Eddie Daniels (born October 19, 1941) is an American musician and composer. Although he is best known as a jazz clarinet player, he has also played alto and tenor saxophones, as well as classical music on the clarinet.

Anat Cohen is a New York City-based jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and bandleader originally from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Evan Christopher (born August 31, 1969 in Long Beach, California) is an American clarinetist and composer based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Recognized mainly for a personal brand of "contemporary early-jazz," he strives to extend the legacy of the unique clarinet style anchored in the musical vocabulary created by early New Orleans clarinetists such as Lorenzo Tio Jr., Sidney Bechet, Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, and Johnny Dodds.

Donald Byron (born November 8, 1958) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He primarily plays clarinet, but has also used bass clarinet and saxophones.

Albany Leon "Barney" Bigard (March 3, 1906 – June 27, 1980) was an American jazz clarinetist who also played tenor saxophone, known for his 15-year tenure with Duke Ellington.

Craig Ball is an American, swing clarinet player and leader of the White Heat Swing Orchestra. He recorded the sound track for the Warner Brother’s film Dick Tracy.

Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker and playwright, whose career spans more than 50 years.

Mark Summer was the Turtle Island Quartet's original cellist; he is a co-founder of the quartet and performed with Turtle Island (a.k.a. Turtle Island String Quartet) from its founding in 1985 until the fall of 2015.

Oscar Pettiford (September 30, 1922 – September 8, 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom.

Frederick Katz (February 25, 1919 – September 7, 2013) was an American cellist and composer. He was among the earliest jazz musicians to establish the cello as a viable improvising solo instrument. Katz has been described in CODA magazine as "the first real jazz cellist." Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm (b. 1962), who recorded a 2002 tribute album to the older musician (A Valentine For Fred Katz, Atavistic Records), praises Katz for introducing his instrument to jazz: " managed to find a way to make it swing."

Charles Matthew "Matt" Brubeck (born May 9, 1961) is an American cellist, bassist, keyboardist, composer and arranger. He is both a performer of classical music and jazz and rock.

Rufus Harley, Jr. (May 20, 1936 – August 1, 2006) was an American jazz musician of mixed Cherokee and African ancestry, known primarily as the first jazz musician to adopt the Scottish great Highland bagpipe as his primary instrument.

Art Van Damme (April 9, 1920 – February 15, 2010) was a jazz accordionist.

One Pedersen played in the trio Detail, together with Frode Gjerstad (saxophone) and John Stevens (drums) from 1981, and released several albums on the free jazz company Circulasione Totale.

Mat Mathews, born Mathieu Hubert Wijnandts Schwarts (June 18, 1924 – February 12, 2009), was a Dutch jazz accordionist.

Pete Jolly (June 5, 1932 – November 6, 2004) was an American West Coast jazz pianist and accordionist. He was well known for his performance of television themes and various movie soundtracks.

Frode Haltli (born 15 May 1975 in Levanger), is a Norwegian accordion player.

Richard Galliano (born December 12, 1950, Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes) is a French accordionist.

A Norwegian musician (vocals, accordion), known for his multicultural musical expressions, and many recordings.

A multi-instrument Norwegian musician, entertainer and with Jarle Vespestad (drums) and Nils-Olav Johansen (vocal and guitar), central members of the Balkan-jazz orchestra Farmers market.

A Norwegian musician (accordion and saxophone) in the genres of jazz and folk. He is self-taught.

Luciano Biondini is an Italian jazz and folk music accordion player that has appeared on the albums of various musicians, including Gabriele Mirabassi, Fratelli Mancuso, Ivano Fossati and Rabih Abou-Khalil.

Dhafer Youssef (Tunisian Arabic: ظافر يوسف‎; born 19 November 1967 in Teboulba, Tunisia) is a composer, singer and oud player.

Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. (/ˈtʃeɪ.dər/ CHAY-der; July 16, 1925 – May 5, 1982), known as Cal Tjader, was an American Latin jazz musician, known as the most successful non-Latino Latin musician. He also explored various other jazz idioms but never abandoned the music of Cuba, the Caribbean, and Latin America, performing it until his death.

Ira Sullivan (born May 1, 1931) is a bop jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist, flautist, saxophonist and composer born in Washington, D.C.. An active musician since the 1950s, he may be best known for his extensive work with Red Rodney and Lin Halliday among others.

Edward "Sonny" Stitt (born Edward Boatner, Jr.; February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. He was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his generation, recording over 100 albums. He was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern, in reference to his relentless touring and devotion to jazz.

Peter Tripp Sprague (born October 11, 1955) is an American jazz guitarist, composer, musical arranger and musical transcriber, sound recording engineer, and music producer. In 1984 jazz critic Leonard Feather, in a review for the Los Angeles Times, called Sprague, "One of the emergent great guitarists." While he is highly conversant with many forms of both jazz and classical music, his own compositions and arrangements have often reflected a Latin flavor, though lately he has created and performed a number of pieces specifically for his "String Consort" group (featuring a string quartet of violins, viola, and cello) which range from classical- to American folk-originated explorations. He owns and operates SpragueLand Studios where he is studio recording engineer and often plays as one of the performing musicians. He also owns and has been producing for his own record label, SBE Records, since 1994. Although he lives in the North County region of San Diego, California and performs frequently in the San Diego and greater Southern California region, he has traveled to and performed in a number of international venues. He has one brother, jazz saxophonist Tripp Sprague, and one sister, Terry Sprague, who teaches dance as depicted on film and video. He is married to Stefanie Flory, an occupational therapist and the manager of SpragueLand Studios. They have one daughter, Kylie Sprague, born in 1993, and live in Leucadia, California.

Wayne Shorter (born August 25, 1933) is an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Many of Shorter's compositions have become jazz standards, and his output has earned worldwide recognition, critical praise and various commendations, including 10 Grammy Awards. He has also received acclaim for his mastery of the soprano saxophone (after switching his focus from the tenor in the late 1960s), beginning an extended reign in 1970 as Down Beat's annual poll-winner on that instrument, winning the critics' poll for 10 consecutive years and the readers' for 18. The New York Times has described Shorter as "probably jazz's greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser."

Sir George Shearing, OBE (13 August 1919 – 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. The composer of over 300 titles, including the jazz standard "Lullaby of Birdland", had multiple albums on the Billboard charts during the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He died of heart failure in New York City, at the age of 91.

George Allen Russell (June 23, 1923 – July 27, 2009) was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953).

Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist, widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards.

Maxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.

Sun Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, legal name Le Sony'r Ra; May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993) was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his experimental music, "cosmic philosophy," prolific output, and theatrical performances. He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979.

Louis Prima (December 7, 1910 – August 24, 1978) was an American singer, actor, songwriter, and trumpeter. Prima rode the musical trends of his time, starting with his seven-piece New Orleans style jazz band in the late 1920s, then leading a swing combo in the 1930s, a big band in the 1940s, a Vegas lounge act in the 1950s, and a pop-rock band in the 1960s.

Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966) was a jazz pianist, born and raised in Harlem, New York City. While Thelonious Monk became his close friend, his greatest influence on piano was Art Tatum.

Gregory Porter (born November 4, 1971) is an American jazz vocalist, songwriter and actor. Porter won the 2014 Grammy for best jazz vocal album, Liquid Spirit.

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, CC, CQ, OOnt (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, but simply "O.P." by his friends. He released over 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards, and received numerous other awards and honours. He is considered to have been one of the greatest jazz pianists, and played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years.

Charles "Charlie" Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as "Yardbird" and "Bird", was an American jazz saxophonist and composer.

Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan (April 6, 1927 – January 20, 1996) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also a notable arranger, working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. Mulligan's pianoless quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the more important cool jazz groups. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments.

Joseph Albert "Joe" Morello (July 17, 1928 – March 12, 2011) was a jazz drummer best known for his 12½-year stint with The Dave Brubeck Quartet. He was frequently noted for playing in the unusual time signatures employed by that group in such pieces as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk". Popular for its work on college campuses during the 1950s, Brubeck’s group reached new heights with Morello. In June 1959, Morello participated in a recording session with the quartet — completed by the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and the bassist Eugene Wright — that yielded "Kathy’s Waltz" and "Three to Get Ready," both of which intermingled 3/4 and 4/4 time signatures.

Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser" "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington, which is particularly remarkable as Ellington composed more than 1,000 pieces, whereas Monk wrote about 70.

Fender Jazz Bass Marcus Miller signature Fender Jazz Bass

Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader. His compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop, drawing heavily from black gospel music and blues, while sometimes containing elements of Third Stream, free jazz, and classical music. He once cited Duke Ellington and church as his main influences.

John Lenwood "Jackie" McLean (May 17, 1931–March 31, 2006) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and educator, and is one of the few musicians to be elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame in the year of their death.

An American piano-accordionist, arranger and composer. He was recognized as one of the most recorded accordionists in the world.

Sheldon "Shelly" Manne (June 11, 1920 – September 26, 1984), was an American jazz drummer. Most frequently associated with West Coast jazz, he was known for his versatility and also played in a number of other styles, including Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz and fusion, as well as contributing to the musical background of hundreds of Hollywood films and television programs.

Fela Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti; 15 October 1938 – 2 August 1997), also known as Fela Anikulapo Kuti or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist, musician, composer, pioneer of the Afrobeat music genre, human rights activist, and political maverick.

Mark Kramer (born Stephen Michael Bonner in New York City in 1958), known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, record producer and founder of the New York City record label Shimmy-Disc. He was a full-time member of the bands New York Gong, Shockabilly, Bongwater and Dogbowl & Kramer, has played on tour (usually on bass guitar) with bands such as Butthole Surfers, B.A.L.L., Ween, Half Japanese and The Fugs (1984 reunion tour), and has also performed regularly with John Zorn and other improvising musicians of New York City's so-called "downtown scene" of the 1980s.

Stanley Newcomb "Stan" Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was a pianist, composer, and arranger who led an innovative, influential, and often controversial American jazz orchestra. In later years he was active as an educator.

Milton "Bags" Jackson (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999) was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solos as a member of the Modern Jazz Quartet and his penchant for collaborating with several hard bop and post-bop players.

Thaddeus Joseph "Thad" Jones (March 28, 1923 – August 20, 1986) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader.

Joseph Arthurlin "Joe" Harriott (15 July 1928 in Kingston, Jamaica – 2 January 1973 in Southampton, Hampshire) was a Jamaican jazz musician and composer, whose principal instrument was the alto saxophone.

An American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. Starting his career with Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound.

Foreststorn "Chico" Hamilton, September 20, 1921 – November 25, 2013) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader.

Tigran Hamasyan (Armenian: Տիգրան Համասյան; born July 17, 1987) is an Armenian jazz pianist. He plays mostly original compositions, which are strongly influenced by the Armenian folk tradition, often using its scales and modalities. In addition to Tigran's folk influence, he is much influenced by American jazz traditions and to some extent, as on his album Red Hail, by progressive rock. His solo album A Fable is most strongly influenced by Armenian folk music. Even on his most overt jazz compositions and renditions of well-known jazz pieces, his improvisations often contain embellishments based on scales from Middle Eastern/South Western Asian traditions.

Stéphane Grappelli (French pronunciation: ​; 26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997) was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his 80s.

Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He was among the earliest tenor players to adapt the bebop musical language of people such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the instrument. Gordon's height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and live performance career spanned over 40 years.

An American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer.

Douglas Clare Fischer (October 22, 1928 – January 26, 2012) was an American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. After graduating from Michigan State University (from whom, five decades later, he would receive an honorary doctorate), he became the pianist and arranger for the vocal group the Hi-Lo's in the late 1950s. Fischer went on to work with Donald Byrd and Dizzy Gillespie, and became known for his Latin and bossa nova recordings in the 1960s. He composed the Latin jazz standard "Morning", and the jazz standard "Pensativa". Consistently cited by jazz pianist and composer Herbie Hancock as a major influence ("I wouldn't be me without Clare Fischer"), he was nominated for eleven Grammy Awards during his lifetime, winning for his landmark album, Clare Fischer & Salsa Picante Present "2 + 2" (1981), the first of Fischer's records to incorporate the vocal ensemble writing developed during his Hi-Lo's days into his already sizable Latin jazz discography; it was also the first recorded installment in Fischer's three-decade-long collaboration with his son Brent. Fischer was also a posthumous Grammy winner for ¡Ritmo! (2012) and for Music for Strings, Percussion and the Rest (2013).

A Canadian jazz musician and bandleader. He came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra before forming his own band in 1957.

Ian Ernest Gilmore "Gil" Evans (born Green; May 13, 1912 – March 20, 1988) was a Canadian jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He played an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz fusion, and collaborated extensively with Miles Davis.

William John "Bill" Evans (pronunciation: /ˈɛvəns/, August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who mostly worked in a trio setting. Evans' use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines continue to influence jazz pianists today.

Paul Desmond (born Paul Emil Breitenfeld; November 25, 1924 – May 30, 1977) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer, best known for the work he did in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for composing that group's greatest hit, "Take Five". He was one of the most popular musicians to come out of the West Coast's cool jazz scene.

Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, together with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, post-bop and jazz fusion.

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (born June 12, 1941) is an American jazz and fusion pianist, keyboardist, and composer.

An American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and was later at the forefront of free jazz.

Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, a term he invented with the name of an album. Coleman's timbre was easily recognized: his keening, crying sound drew heavily on blues music. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.

Gary Burton (born January 23, 1943, Anderson, Indiana) is an American jazz vibraphonist, composer and jazz educator. Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. This approach caused him to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in music education due to his 30 years at the Berklee College of Music.

An American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke".

Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. (December 23, 1929 – May 13, 1988) was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and vocalist.

Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra, Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band, Toshiko - Mariano Quartet

Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.

Paul Samuel Whiteman (March 28, 1890 – December 29, 1967) was an American bandleader, composer, orchestral director and violinist.

Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, is considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Known affectionately as The Brute, or Frog, he had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with growls), yet on ballads he played with warmth and sentiment. Stylistically he was indebted to alto star Johnny Hodges, who, he said, taught him to play his instrument.

Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer, whose innovations to the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano, and whose best-known compositions, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999.

Clark Terry Jr. (December 14, 1920 – February 21, 2015) was an American swing and bebop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, composer, educator, and NEA Jazz Masters inductee.

Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, and actor. Also an author, Shaw wrote both fiction and non-fiction.

George Paxton (c. 1914 – April 19, 1989) was an American big band leader, saxophonist, composer, publisher, and arranger of swing jazz music from the 1930s to the late 1940s; as well as president and producer of Coed Records, primarily a doo-wop label, from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s.

Alton Glenn Miller (March 1, 1904 – missing in action December 15, 1944) was an American big band musician, arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was the best-selling recording artist from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known big bands. Miller's recordings include "In the Mood", "Moonlight Serenade", "Pennsylvania 6-5000", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", "A String of Pearls", "At Last", "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo", "American Patrol", "Tuxedo Junction", "Elmer's Tune", and "Little Brown Jug". While he was traveling to entertain U.S. troops in France during World War II, Glenn Miller's aircraft disappeared in bad weather over the English Channel.

McShann was at the forefront of blues and hard bop jazz musicians mainly from Kansas City. He assembled his own big band, with musicians that included some of the most influential artists of their time, including Charlie Parker, Bernard Anderson, Ben Webster and Walter Brown.

Dick Johnson (December 1, 1925 – January 10, 2010) was an American big band clarinetist, best known for his work with the Artie Shaw Band. From 1983 until his death he was the leader of the Artie Shaw Orchestra.

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James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. (December 18, 1897 – December 29, 1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. He was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and his influence was vast. He was often known as Smack Henderson (apparently due to his college baseball hitting skills). Fletcher is ranked along with Duke Ellington as one of the most influential arrangers and band leaders in jazz history, and helped bridge the gap between the dixieland and swing era.

Hawk and sometimes "Bean", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. One of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument, as Joachim E. Berendt explained: "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn".

Benjamin David "Benny" Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing".

Wilfred "Mickey" Fields (1932/1933 – January 16, 1995) was a Baltimore-area jazz saxophonist, a local legend who refused to play outside the Baltimore area, although he was asked to leave Baltimore many times to go on the road with many famous bands.

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist and bandleader of jazz orchestras. He led his orchestra from 1923 until his death, his career spanning over 50 years.

An American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", because of his smooth-toned trombone playing.

James "Jimmy" Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD". He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and "It's The Dreamer In Me". His other major recordings were "Tailspin", "John Silver", "So Many Times", "Amapola", "Brazil (Aquarela do Brasil)", "Pennies from Heaven" with Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Frances Langford, "Grand Central Getaway", and "So Rare".

Charles Henry "Charlie" Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) was an American swing and jazz guitarist.

Bennett Lester "Benny" Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. Carter performed with major artists from several generations of jazz, and at major festivals, such as his 1958 appearance with Billie Holiday at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer.

William James "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother taught him to play the piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie theater in his home town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16 he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924 he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them until Moten's death in 1935.

Edward "Kid" Ory (December 25, 1886 – January 23, 1973) was a jazz trombonist and bandleader. He was born in Woodland Plantation near La Place, Louisiana.

Joseph Nathan Oliver (December 19, 1881 – April 10, 1938) better known as King Oliver or Joe Oliver, was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was particularly recognized for his playing style and his pioneering use of mutes in jazz. Also a notable composer, he wrote many tunes still played today including "Dippermouth Blues", "Sweet Like This", "Canal Street Blues", and "Doctor Jazz". He was the mentor and teacher of Louis Armstrong. His influence was such that Armstrong claimed, "if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today."

Jimmie Noone (April 23, 1895 – April 19, 1944) was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader. After beginning his career in New Orleans he led Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, an influential Chicago band that recorded for Vocalion and Decca Records. Maurice Ravel acknowledged basing his Boléro on a Jimmie Noone improvisation. At the time of his death Noone had his own quartet in Los Angeles and was part of an all-star band that was an important force in reviving interest in traditional New Orleans jazz in the 1940s.

Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols (May 8, 1905 – June 28, 1965) was an American jazz cornettist, composer, and jazz bandleader.

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (October 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer who started his career in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The group made the first recordings, and claimed authorship, of many jazz standards, the most famous being "Tiger Rag". In late 1917 the spelling of the band's name was changed to Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Dominic James "Nick" LaRocca (April 11, 1889 – February 22, 1961), was an early jazz cornetist and trumpeter and the leader of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. He is the composer of one of the most recorded jazz classics of all-time, "Tiger Rag". He was part of what is generally regarded as the first recorded jazz band, a band which recorded and released the first jazz recording, "Livery Stable Blues" in 1917.

Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson (December 27, 1879 - July 7, 1949) was a prominent early New Orleans jazz trumpet player in the early years of the 20th century who enjoyed a revived career in the 1940s.

Early 1920s–1983

Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden (September 6, 1877 – November 4, 1931) was an African-American cornetist and is regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of rag-time music, or Jass, which later came to be known as jazz.

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.

Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.

An American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in jazz.