A trio featuring reedist Ingrid Laubrock, drummer Tom Rainey and bassist Brandon Lopez will deliver rigorous free-jazz explorations at this year’s edition of Jazzfest Berlin.

​Bley told DownBeat in 1984: “I’m just a composer, and I use jazz musicians because they’re smarter, and they can save your ass in a bad situation. … I need all the help I can get.”

“I wanted it to be a continuous celebration of life,” Rodriguez says of his new album, Coral Way.

“Johnny O’Neil has such charisma, when he sits at the piano he commands attention,” observed pianist Sullivan Fortner, his duet partner at this year’s Detroit Jazz Fest.

Gabriela Martina and her longstanding band, from left, Vancil Cooper, Martina, Ben Rosenblum, Kyle Miles, Maxim Lubarsky and Jussi Reijonen.

“Blue Note music has been such an integral part of my musical and life experience for so long,” says Redman. “It’s surreal to be a part of this lineage.”

“Charlie Christian with the Benny Goodman Sextet on record, that was it!” said Freeman of his early influences.

“One of my hopes is that we find new and different versions of and possibilities for community,” Pinderhughes says of The Healing Project.

Salles says his music “is a combination of being from Brazil and living in the U.S. as an immigrant.”

“There’s a lot of untapped potential in that classic big band literature,” Argue says, noting that it serves as inspiration.