Kevin Whitehead

Before he was famous for popularizing bossa nova with "The Girl from Ipanema" in the early 1960s, saxophonist Stan Getz recorded with small jazz groups all through the '50s. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says a new reissue shows Getz was one of the best a playing pretty.

Marcus Printup isn't the first trumpeter to combined the trumpet and the harp. It's long been an instrument where jazz women could make their mark. A Time for Love is a quiet and cozy album with Printup's wife, harpist Riza Hequibal, but it's never dull.

In the 1940s, Charlie Parker, nicknamed "Bird," was a prime mover behind the new style of bebop, with its refined harmonies, offbeat rhythms and abstract melodies played at breakneck speed. On Bird Songs, Joe Lovano looks for new ways into Parker's material.