The music world lost one of the most prolific providers of bottom end when bassist Bob Cranshaw passed away yesterday. These are some of my favorite performances of Bob’s.

10 (+1) favorite tracks by the great saxophonist Steve Wilson. Enjoy!

Aside from being in shock that Bobby Hutcherson is gone, I struggle to figure out a way to summarize his musical contributions. For me his music will always be defined by the way his infectious warmth and rugged creative searching shattered any listener’s capacity to put the resulting music into a rigid box. Here is a small sampling of my favorites from his discography.

Every few years I dust off Ted Dunbar’s “A Nice Clean Machine for Pedro” and challenge my students at Wesleyan to learn it – such a gorgeous and deceptively challenging tune. Last year I wrote about Ted’s impact as an educator, but now it’s time to talk about his unique and powerful voice as a guitarist and composer.

It seems that with each year it gets harder to keep up with all the great music being released. I began with a Top 10 list, and in the end struggled to narrow it down to even 20.

RIP Phil Woods – here are 10 of my favorite moments by one of the greatest saxophonists jazz has ever offered the world.