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Donny came to Chicago earlier this year with Jason, Tim, and Mark for a run at Green Mill previewing music they were getting ready to record. Needless to say, we were dumbfounded and extremely excited at what we heard and saw. What we heard was all this new music that was, at the time, dubbed "Stadium Jazz" by Tim. It was big, bigger than anything we'd heard before. Donny flexing his herculean horn, Mark breaking beats and blowing minds, Tim towering in the back muscling his fuzz pedals, and Jason synthing it all to the outer limits. What we saw was more head bobbing than you'd expect at a jazz show. The young kids trying their hardest to record video on their phones on-the-sly all lapping up every note by everyone on the stage. Maybe it was the Old Fashioneds we were drinking, but this was one of the best shows we've ever seen at the Mill.

What values does a jazz education offer beyond the music itself?

Where Donny's previous album Perpetual Motion was a blistering electro-acoustic hybrid, Casting for Gravity soars past fusion into alchemy, forging a visionary voice from eclectic influences.

The in-studio video of track 1 from Dave Douglas' album Be Still featuring Aoife O'Donovan of Crooked Still, Jon Irabagon, Matt Mitchell, Linda Oh, and Rudy Royston.

Others will no doubt express themselves in writing about the late, great tenor saxophonist Von Freeman better than I ever could but I'm not sure the written word is necessary anyway. Here is seven minutes of tenor saxophone mastery that's all you really need in order to know the man and what mattered to him.

Grammy-winning saxophonist and composer Joe Lovano and two-time Grammy nominated trumpeter Dave Douglas are current masters on their respective instruments within the pantheon of modern jazz. From their collaborations on acclaimed recordings such as Trio Fascination: Edition Two and more recently John Zorn’s Stolas, Lovano and Douglas have shown that their distinct and robust voices can lead, blend and push the idiom forward both in composition and improvisation, while embracing the front-line masters of previous generations. In 2008, when Lovano and Douglas were co-leaders of the renowned SFJAZZ Collective, the group paid tribute to living icon Wayne Shorter showcasing arrangements of Shorter originals alongside newly composed pieces influenced by Shorter’s compositional voice. The experience was a catalyst that lead the two instrumentalists to conceive the Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas Quintet, Sound Prints; an all-star ensemble including up and coming pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda Oh, and drummer Joey Baron. Performing new repertoire as well as brand new Shorter compositions in direct collaboration with Shorter, the quintet is less an homage to Wayne Shorter and more of a unique convergence of three unparalleled trajectories.

Linda Oh with Dayna Stephens, Fabian Almazan, Rudy Royston plays Jazz Standard, Tuesday June 19th.