Then I went to NYC, walking to the Cornelia Street Café in the West Village to see saxophonist Mark Turner play with a guitarist-led quartet. He was quietly insistent, whether playing softly & or jamming notes together, worth seeing leading his own group....
The next night was the splurge, first muscular, delightfully chatty, pianist Harold Mabern & his trio plus tenor player Eric Alexander (worth hearing again) & singer Alexis Cole (a former Carrboro resident). Second, the marvelous SF Jazz Collective, eight world-class players who group semi-annually around individual compositions/arrangements. I'm sorry I missed them at NCSU last fall...