GRAMMYs Roundup- Jazz

The nominees for Best Contemporary Jazz Album have used drum machines with amplified guitars and synthesisers.

Sampling, scratching, and drum machines have joined amplified guitars and synthesizers in the arsenal of sounds used by the nominees for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Smooth and easy doesn't have to mean soulless and simple as Fourplay demonstrates on Journey, with its intricate group interplay on memorable compositions giving way to expressive solos and bassist Nathan East's vocals on the title track.

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On Unspeakable, Bill Frisell shifts moods as he shifts lineups from track to track. In-your-face beats and ethereal strings, samples of music from all over the world and sassy horns, are all linked together by his edgy guitar work. In Praise Of Dreams is also in praise of dialogue between Jan Garbarek's saxes and synths and Kim Kashkashian's viola. Don't let Garbarek's Norwegian nativity trick you into thinking this music is chilly; instead, as evident on the title track, it is often warm and inviting. A live retrospective of Don Grusin's career, The Hang spans hard fusion, Afro-funk, smooth jazz and Latin dance music played by an all-star lineup including vocalist Patti Austin, guitarist Lee Ritenour, and saxophonists Nelson Rangell, Sadao Watanabe and Ernie Watts. Roy Hargrove, one of most gifted mainstream trumpeters of this era, is also a funkster. Strength , from his ensemble the RH Factor, features soul jams spanning the gamut of Afro-beat, breezy R&B, and jazzy funk, which were taken from the same sessions that produced Hard Groove.

The nominees for Best Jazz Vocal Album continue to expand the definition of the American popular song to include pop and rock tunes from the last half-century. Do all the best jazz singers play piano well enough to accompany themselves? Andy Bey's American Song is evidence in the affirmative, offering the twin pleasures on It's Only A Paper Moon and several Ellington songs. Jamie Cullum's Twentysomething shows a knack for writing jazzy pop songs with the opening track, These Are The Days, and the title track as well as imaginative covers of tunes by Jimi Hendrix, Radiohead, Oscar Levant and Cole Porter. Billed as Al Jarreau's return to jazz, Accentuate The Positive features straight-ahead ballad singing on The Nearness Of You with inventive scatting on Scootcha-Booty, vocalese lyrics to Groovin' High and the funky jazz of Cold Duck.

Rapper and actress Queen Latifah adds jazzy singer to her résumé with The Dana Owens Album, scatting on Close Your Eyes and swinging on Baby Get Lost. On R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal), Nancy Wilson demonstrates there's truth found in the title of the disc's first track, An Older Man Is Like An Elegant Wine, through her interplay with guest artists Phil Woods, George Shearing and Toots Thielemans.

The nominees for Best Jazz Intrumental Album, Individual Or Group draw strength from their individual mixes of ballads, jazz standards and jam-like blowing. The Bill Charlap Trio plays the praises of Leonard Bernstein on Somewhere adding a subtle swagger to Lucky To Be Me, a racing Jump, an introspective A Quiet Girl and a funereal solo take on the disc's title track. On tunes ranging from Henry VIII's Greensleeves to Pat Metheny's Question & Answer, drummer Roy Haynes' Fountain Of Youth demonstrates this quartet's winning ways before an audience at Birdland; like home-run hitters, they swing and strut.

The Out-Of-Towners demonstrates Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette's collective ability to always find something new to say about the writing of Cole Porter, Jimmy McHugh and Gerry Mulligan. The Branford Marsalis Quartet explores the beauty that can be found in great sadness on Eternal, which combines soulful ballads by each of the quartet members with three seldom-performed standards. Pianist McCoy Tyner and saxophonist Gary Bartz have been playing together since before trumpeter Terence Blanchard and bassist Christian McBride were toddlers, but backed by drummer Lewis Nash they sound like a classic blowing session from the late '50s on Illuminations.

As orchestral as the nominees for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album get, they still often allude to a danceable big band underneath the sheets. On Get Well Soon the Bob Brookmeyer New Art Orchestra plays intricate charts that don't allow sections to hang back playing whole note unison lines, but instead weave melodic themes in and out of colorful harmonic backdrops. John La Barbera worked on his arrangement of On The Wild Side's title track for 15 years before Buddy Rich added it to his band's book.

While Rich never recorded it, La Barbera's LA-based big band has, along with arrangements of tunes by Horace Silver and Miles Davis plus Eleanor Rigby. On Coral, saxophonist David Sánchez, backed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, explores compositions by Jobim, Villa-Lobos and Carlos Franzetti, who arranged the charts and conducted the orchestra. For The Way: The Music Of Slide Hampton, trombonist Slide Hampton has written an homage to three great jazz composers and rearranged his classic Frame For The Blues for the jazz strengths of the venerable Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, including an always swinging rhythm section with Jim McNeely at the piano, and soloists Dick Oatts and Gary Smulyan on saxophones. The Maria Schneider Orchestra's fascination with dance — from the flamenco to the foxtrot — is heard in Concert In The Garden, which also had two of its compositions, "Three Romances" and "Bulería, Soleá Y Rumba" nominated for Composing/Arranging. Saxophonist Donny McCaslin's nominated solo on the latter is the piece's emotional core.

The Best Jazz Instrumrntal Solo category gets right to the heart of jazz, the individual's reaction to a specific piece of music played at that specific moment. Pianist Alan Broadbent's solo on What's New, from You And The Night And The Music, embellishes the melancholy theme of this classic while preserving its emotional depth, and then abruptly ends with a quote from My Momma Done Told Me. Don Byron takes a bass clarinet solo on I Want To Be Happy that scurries right along, careening into a maelstrom. It's taken from the album Ivey-Divey , with its nod to Lester Young and Nat Cole's bass-less trio. With a new time signature and reharmonization, pianist Herbie Hancock takes a fleet-fingered, almost frenetic solo on his classic Speak Like A Child from Harvey Mason's With All My Heart. At their best, as with Wee, guitarist John Scofield and bassist Steve Swallow, backed by drummer Bill Stewart, achieve their goal of sounding like one big guitar on EnRoute, recorded at Manhattan's Blue Note club.

Nominees for Best Latin Jazz Album demonstrate that the category isn't confined to music of the Caribbean but ranges from Harlem to Rio and across the Atlantic to Spain. Tunes by Miles and Metheny, a melody by Jerome Kern and lyrics in Yoruba with danceable rhythms linked together by clave mark percussionist Raphael Cruz's Bebop Timba featuring saxophonist Rick Margitza, Spyro Gyra guitarist Julio Fernandez and Bata master Orlando Puntilla Rios.

On their eponymous release, Jerry Gonzalez Y Los Pirates Del Flamenco mix the leader's saucy jazz trumpet with flamenco guitars and hand percussion on a set of originals, folk tunes, and compositions by Monk and Bird. Think of Jose Sabree Marroquin as the Nelson Riddle of Mexico or the Hanry Mancini, writing music for television, radio and film including the melancholy ballads restructured and reharmonized by bassist Charlie Haden on Land Of The Sun.

Rearranging the legendary album by Miles Davis as Latin dances with new time signatures and each song's structure remodeled for more horns, the Conrad Herwig Nonet enlarged on an exciting new way to play the classics of modern jazz with Another Kind Of Blue: The Latin Side Of Miles Davis. Argentine trumpeter Diego Urcola's burnished tone, like a fireplace reflected through a snifter of brandy, is the unifying force on Soundances as he covers Miles Davis' "Blue In Green" as nuevo tango, pays homage to Astor Piazzolla with a minor blues, and showcases funk and Argentine folk forms.