The friend who accompanied me to Diana Krall's show Monday night had been enjoying her music for a while, but he had never known her to be a pianist as well as a singer. As Krall pumped and clacked away in the black stiletto heels she s...

Guitarist Jack Grassel has long been one of Milwaukee's most proficient (and prolific) jazz musicians, and singer Jill Jensen has been his partner in marriage and music since before the present century began. On Jack and Jill Jazz, Grassel's 18th album...

Sara Erde began by rapping with Neneh Cherry and now pairs her urban contemporary vocals with the Andalusian cry of Alfonso Cid in Caramelo. The NYC group brings a jigger of jazz, a touch of klezmer and a heaping serving of flamenco to hot R&B...

The idea of blending cool jazz with heavy rock, melding “I Can See for Miles” with a touch of Miles Davis, may sound like novelty shtick—and it almost is, except that the Jazz Punks pull it off without a hitch. The proficient Los Angeles band shifts...

The Extra Crispy Brass Band has a sound that is distinctly Dixie, finding inspiration from the “second line” traditional style of New Orleans jazz. “The first line was the funeral procession and the second line refers to the up-tempo brass band and dancers...

Good pizza can easily be found in Milwaukee, a city that once had tight, thriving Italian neighborhoods in the Third Ward and Bay View. And while pizza ovens popped up all over town in the years following World War II, it took a more recent...

Jerry Grillo has been at it long enough to call himself a veteran—even if he answered his calling as a jazz singer relatively late in life. Only after retiring from a career as a schoolteacher in 1992 was Grillo able to devote himself to his first love...

Cathedral Square Park's free Jazz in the Park concert series continues its season with a performance from Phat Phunktion, a big, brass Madison jazz-funk ensemble that fuses the sounds of '60s soul with Parliament-style freak-outs...

Neal Chandek talks like a jazz musician—and not just because he occasionally speaks of "cats" when referring to two-legged creatures. The veteran Milwaukee pianist and trumpeter riffs with words and ideas, sending them on extended solo...