In 1976, when the World Saxophone Quartet played its first concert, it introduced a new sound to jazz. No bass. No drums. No piano. Just four saxophones: the late Julius Hemphill playing alto, with ...

The tenor sax is a jazz instrument. The paradigmatic jazz instrument, if I may thrown in a $50 word. How many tenor sax sonatas or concertos can you think of that feature the tenor as a solo, or even ...

Call it stereotyping, but the truth is occasionally we’ll see a pairing of musician and instrument we don’t expect. We’d be surprised, for example, to find a burly, hulking guy playing a piccolo. We’d ...

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Gerry Mulligan wasn’t just a baritone sax icon—he was a revolutionary voice in jazz. From his pioneering pianoless quartets to his arranging work on Birth of the Cool, Mulligan proved that space, ...

When alto saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, whose playing transformed the post-WWII jazz world, died in 1955, graffiti began to appear on urban walls across the country: “Bird Lives.” That phrase ...

Nick Brignola, a baritone saxophonist who was one of the top players of his instrument in jazz, has died. He was 65. Brignola died Friday at the Albany Medical Center in Albany, N.Y., after a long ...

If one baritone saxophone counts as a curiosity, and two make up an anomaly, what do three, four or more playing together at New Orleans Jazz Fest amount to? The answer - or at least, one answer - is ...