In 1975, a song titled “All That Jazz” debuted in the musical Chicago. Fifty years later, in regard to the South Florida scene, its title could be amended to “Jazz — Is That All?” Without the few presenting venues and organizations here, and several of the artists who return every one to two years listed below, the genre would largely be missing in action for 2025-2026.
Jazz evolved out of the blues, America’s other great audio cultural offering. Then Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and the British Invasion morphed the blues into rock and roll, usurping jazz and blues as our nation’s forms of popular music. Rock has largely devolved into various other offshoots of pop music since, and blues has stayed alive via many practitioners who can mimic at least parts of its feel. Even while lacking its authenticity, that’s enough to fool most listeners.
But like demanding, European-derived classical music, jazz isn’t easily mimicked. Even the best jam bands only scratch the surface of the genre’s technical and theoretical prerequisites. Trumpeter Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s and created fusion, which gave jazz a revived audience even as the genre’s acoustic traditionalists fought against it. One was fellow trumpeter and Davis successor Wynton Marsalis, who’s helped keep traditional jazz afloat from his 1980s “Young Lions” movement through his current guidance at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Still, outside of the Big Apple and a few other select metropolises in the United States, jazz remains an outlier. Tellingly, its artists are treated more like rock stars in Europe, lending irony to jazz being labeled, by some, as “America’s classical music.”
Stanley Jordan Plays The Dead might seem like a misprint to anyone who recognizes its namesake guitar virtuoso but isn’t deeply familiar with his versatility. The Chicago-born guitarist exploded out of the gate in 1985 with his Blue Note Records debut Magic Touch, named for his two-handed, guitar pick-free, pianistic tapping-and-touch technique. Original compositions, jazz standards and popular music covers (The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel”) made Jordan a star in the music video era, from which he recoiled, eventually relocating to Sedona, Arizona, and releasing everything from meditative music to computerized granular synthesis. In recent years, he’s added a Hendrix tribute with bassist Greg Koerner and drummer Kenwood Dennard — who’s known for doubling on keyboards, sometimes simultaneously, and for his work with Brand X, Jaco Pastorius, and Pat Martino. For Stanley Jordan Plays The Dead, the same trio returns, augmented by keyboardist/guitarist Jesse Hiatt. The Grateful Dead was the seminal jam band from its late 1960s inception through the 1995 death of founding guitarist Jerry Garcia, the composer and improvising musician most responsible for jazz-tinged Dead classics like “Crazy Fingers,” “Dark Star,” “Terrapin Station” and “Blues for Allah.”
5:30 and 8:30 p.m. Nov. 1 at the Arts Garage ($60-$65).
In existence for nearly 50 years, New Orleans-spawned the Dirty Dozen Brass Band continuously proves to be the real deal. Launched in 1977 out of the city’s Dirty Dozen Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which provided funeral arrangements for Black southerners who could rarely afford life insurance, the ensemble’s early experience included following funeral processions before it became the club’s house band. Of course, Crescent City funerals don’t just feature somber dirges, so this seven-piece lineup jubilantly offers a mix of second-line, traditional and bebop jazz; funk, soul and R&B music. Best American Roots Performance Grammy Award winners in 2023 for its song “Stompin’ Ground,” the group has two-dozen studio and live releases, and appears on additional recordings by everyone from Buckwheat Zydeco, the Neville Brothers, B.B. King, Dr. John, Terence Blanchard and the Manhattan Transfer to Elvis Costello, Gov’t Mule, the Black Crowes, Modest Mouse, and Norah Jones. The music of saxophonist/vocalists Roger Lewis and Trevarri Huff-Boone, trumpeter/vocalist Gregory Davis, trombonist/vocalist Stephen Walker, sousaphonist Kirk Joseph, guitarist Takeshi Shimmura, and drummer Julian Addison always challenges audiences to stay seated.
7:45 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Amaturo Theater at the Broward Center ($65), 7 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Lyric Theatre, 59 S.W. Flagler Ave., Stuart (772-286-7827, $55).
Like sands through the hourglass, British smooth jazz group Acoustic Alchemy has continued on for 44 years in spite of several personnel changes, and made recurring recent stops in South Florida. The group’s founding guitarists in 1981, nylon-string player Simon James and steel-string player Nick Webb, are no longer there, James leaving early and Webb dying of pancreatic cancer in 1998 after he and and new guitarist Greg Carmichael had become in-flight entertainment on Virgin Atlantic flights to and from the United States and guided the band to mainstream success. That started with Acoustic Alchemy getting a call from MCA Records, six weeks after sending the label their demo, to record their 1987 debut Red Dust and Spanish Lace. Carmichael spans the group’s recording career; guitarist Miles Gilderdale replaced Webb in 1999 and has remained since. A recent health crisis forced Gilderdale off the summer touring schedule, during which he was subbed for by John Grant, Andy Abel, and native Floridian Nate Najar. On the group’s latest release, the EP The Empire of Lights, Part One, Carmichael plays the nylon-string and Gilderdale the steel string and electric guitars, accompanied by keyboardist Jay Rowe and brothers Gary and Greg Grainger (bass and drums, respectively).
7 p.m. Nov. 21 at the Lyric Theatre ($55).
If the term “jazz flute” only conjures up mocking imagery of actor Will Ferrell playing one as news anchor Ron Burgundy in the nightclub scene from the film Anchorman, then you probably haven’t experienced Nestor Torres. A native of Puerto Rico, the 68-year-old flutist moved to New York City with his family at age 18, studying classical flute there at Mannes School of Music before advancing to Boston to study jazz flute at the Berklee College of Music and further his classical studies at the New England Conservatory. Also adept at the Cuban charanga style, Torres’ versatility has since earned him multiple Grammy nominations and a Latin Grammy Award. His collaborators include Herbie Hancock, Tito Puente, Gloria Estefan, Michel Camilo, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Dave Matthews, Kenny Loggins, and the Cleveland, Singapore, and New World symphony orchestras. Influenced by jazz flute forefathers Hubert Laws and Herbie Mann, classical masters Jean-Pierre Rampal and James Galway, charanga stylist Richard Egues, and rocker Ian Anderson, Torres is always a major draw in South Florida. He has 14 recordings under his name to draw from, and will likely call on material from his most recent releases such as Jazz Flute Traditions (2018) and Dominican Suite (2022).
8 p.m. Dec. 19-20 at the Arts Garage ($55-$60).
The guitar-and-vocal pairing of John Pizzarelli and Catherine Russell aims high, as in Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass high. That duo’s studio releases — Take Love Easy (1973), Fitzgerald and Pass…Again (1976), Speak Love (1983) and Easy Living (1986) — set the gold standard for the jazz formula. Yet this duo’s presentation is entitled “Billie and Blue Eyes,” meaning Pizzarelli’s additional capable vocals are likely to cover Frank Sinatra while Russell interprets Billie Holiday. Still no small feat, and 68-year-old New York City native Russell is built for the task. Also a keyboardist, guitarist, mandolinist and percussionist, she’s both recorded and toured with Steely Dan and David Bowie, and her effortless vocal phrasing adorns a solo catalog bookended by her debut Cat (2006) and Send for Me (2022). The 65-year-old Pizzarelli is the son of famed swing guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli (1926-2020), and started his own recording career in 1983 with the tongue-in-cheek I’m Hip (Please Don’t Tell My Father). The younger Pizzarelli opened shows for Sinatra in the 1990s; has a scroll of other recordings under his name, and appears on albums by Paul McCartney, Rosemary Clooney, and James Taylor. His idol is Nat King Cole, as evidenced by his releases Dear Mr. Cole (1994) and P.S. Mr. Cole (1999).
7 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Lyric Theatre ($80).
The Yoko Miwa Trio seems to have found an unlikely house gig at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach. The classically trained Japanese pianist was scheduled to make her debut there in March of 2020 before COVID-19 canceled that show, but she’s made up for it by appearing there every season since. Practically part of a new breed of crossover artists — those adept at jazz and classical music — Miwa wasn’t expecting to be accepted upon her 1997 audition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, yet earned a full scholarship. While there, she became the pianist of choice for jazz vocal sensation Kevin Mahogany (1958-2017), and later became an instructor at the prestigious music school. Berklee has produced more recognizable names in jazz and pop music than any other such institution, and its students are so well-versed that a Monday pick-up Motown night at a Beantown venue like Wally’s produces magic. With Miwa’s longtime trio mates Will Slater (acoustic upright bass) and Scott Goulding (drums), the Boston Music Awards’ 2019 “Jazz Artist of the Year” is likely to perform originals from her latest album, Songs of Joy (2021), jazz standards, and creative covers from her catalog like The Beatles’ “Dear Prudence” and a medley of “You Never Give Me Your Money/Golden Slumbers.”
8 p.m. Feb. 21 at the Arts Garage ($55-$60).
The Brubeck Brothers might be less famous if they had a different last name, sure, but the sons of late jazz piano icon Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) certainly aren’t lacking in talent. Bassist, trombonist and composer Chris Brubeck and drummer Dan Brubeck know the significance of the legacy of their father, whose quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello released one of the top, and top-selling, jazz albums of all-time in Time Out (1959). Later, the elder Brubeck joined sons Chris, Dan and keyboardist Darius Brubeck to form the New Brubeck Quartet. The brothers’ current quartet’s long-standing lineup features Chris and Dan Brubeck with pianist Chuck Lamb and guitarist Mike DeMicco, and is likely to play selections from its handful of albums (including its latest, LifeTimes) and the 17 released under Chris Brubeck’s name since 1974. But the brothers also not only have a lifetime’s worth of experience playing together, but also knowing what audiences coming to a show that features their father’s last name want to hear. The groundbreaking Time Out featured songs in odd time signatures, and Desmond’s title composition and Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk” surprised even its Columbia Records executives by making the album a hit.
7 p.m. March 4 at the Lyric Theatre ($55).
Perhaps obscured within the female jazz vocalist explosion since the 1990s is 62-year-old, Kansas-born Karrin Allyson. And not even Kansas City, but Great Bend, Kan., Karrin Allyson Schoonover’s starting point in what’s since been a wayward route through an unpredictable career. She grew up in Omaha and attended the University of Nebraska, but on a classical piano scholarship. That led to her interest in jazz, which she decided to pursue in Minneapolis after graduating. Four years later, things came full circle when she moved to Kansas City and released her debut album I Didn’t Know About You. After several more critically acclaimed releases, Allyson moved to New York City in 1998 and hasn’t had to look back. She’s capable of singing in English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese on original compositions or cover tunes, and her scat-singing, vocalese and crooning capabilities range from bebop, bossa nova, blues and ballads to the Great American Songbook, samba, pop, and other jazz standards. Her tribute releases have included John Coltrane, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Women’s Suffrage, but for this Gold Coast Jazz Society presentation, Allyson likely wears her heart on her sleeve courtesy of her latest release, A Kiss for Brazil (2024).
7:45 p.m. March 11 at the Amaturo Theater ($65).
Australian guitar wizard Tommy Emmanuel has transitioned from Outback unknown to a current torch-bearer for acoustic jazz guitar and beyond. The native of Muswellbrook, New South Wales, took up the instrument at age 4, and became a professional musician at age 6 when his parents sold their home and took him on the road in a family band that included sister Veronica (lap steel guitar) and brothers Phil (guitar) and Chris (drums). Now 70 years old, Emmanuel was profoundly influenced by fellow guitar finger-picker Chet Atkins (1924-2001). A dual American and Australian citizen, Emmanuel appropriately lives stateside in Tennessee’s Music City, where he once traveled to meet and record with Atkins on what would be his final release, the appropriately titled The Day Finger Pickers Took Over the World (1997). Primarily playing instruments made by Australian guitar manufacturer Maton, Emmanuel’s oversized hands allow him to play simultaneous chords, melodies, harmonies and bass lines. He’ll also occasionally play with a standard guitar pick, a thumb pick, or even a snare drum brush for percussive effect, so fans can expect anything on originals and covers from his appropriately titled 1979 debut From Out of Nowhere to his latest release, Accomplice Two (2023).
7:30 p.m. March 23 at the Broward Center ($46-$162).
Unlike many current jazz groups led by women, the Grace Kelly Quartet is fronted by an instrumentalist. Which isn’t to say that Massachusetts native Kelly doesn’t sing, but that she’s better-known for her versatile alto, soprano and baritone saxophone playing. Born in Wellesley and raised in nearby Brookline, Mass., Kelly proved a prodigy, releasing her debut album Dreaming at age 12. And she didn’t have to look far to find some of the best music schools in the world, studying in-state at the New England Conservatory of Music and then the Berklee College of Music, graduating in 2011 at age 19. Now age 33, her impressive and comprehensive list of studio and stage collaborators includes Wynton Marsalis, Dave Brubeck, Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Questlove, and Lin Manuel-Miranda. With a guest teaching residency at Berklee, where she also became its youngest board of trustees member in 2022, Kelly also knows how to create a play on her name (the exact same as the late actress and princess of Monaco) while saluting a saxophone influence and legend. She and her rotating quartet members are likely to perform selections from her latest album, At the Movies: Grace Kelly With Strings, on which she performs film themes in memory of the 1950 album Charlie Parker With Strings.
7:45 p.m. April 15 at the Amaturo Theater ($65).