'Second-Handed Blues' is the debut album by Adam Fairhall (piano) and Paul J Rogers (electronics, sound sculpture and other instruments). Innovative but highly listenable, the music often includes samples from the far reaches of jazz history - a vocal line from a 1920s vaudeville blues record, or strains from a Scott Joplin rag - and mixes them with contemporary idioms and techniques to create a playful dialogue between styles, eras and technologies.

For their ninth album, the Grammy-nominated vocalist and her band of 18 years leave preconceptions in the dust, taking instantly familiar, American-born compositions, deconstructing them and presenting them anew in their own inimitable way.

Long before he became a world renowned jazz virtuoso, guitarist Pat Martino was a sideman in small combos that prominently featured the Hammond B-3 organ. He's never lost his affection for that particular group dynamic, nor his quiet flair for moving back and forth between the roles of supporting player and compelling soloist. Here, recorded live at Blues Alley with an all-star band, Martino sounds perfectly content enhancing the rhythm section's soulful thrust while, at the same time, his post-bop, minor mode improvising is sleek and precise, never busy, and his use of sliding octaves colorfully underscored his stylistic ties to guitar great Wes Montgomery.

The album 'One Night Only' presents an extraordinary musical get-together. For the first time ever, Dave Grusin and his brother Don playing live together on two grand pianos. They created a magical evening of music at the sold out Bayerischer Rundfunk Radio Hall in Munich.

John Daversa presents an exciting and innovative album of 21st-century big band music. As Bob Mintzer, the renowned saxophonist and longtime Yellowjackets member, puts it in his liner notes, "This CD is not Basie, not Ellington, not Kenton, not Gil Evans." It's John Daversa, big band music for 2011, not 1941.