Historically, jazz has always revolved around geographical hubs. New Orleans was a magnet for early jazz; New York saw the birth of bebop and hard bop; St. Louis and Chicago harbored roots-oriented free jazz movements. Throughout the development of this music, these centers brought musicians together for a ongoing process of cross-fertilization.

This month's edition of All About Jazz focuses on jazz in two Big Cities: New York and Los Angeles.

January was a particularly fecund month for live jazz in New York City, and our writers went out in full force to absorb it all. Nick Catalano took in the Birdland performance of the Andrew Hill Sextet plus 11, a unique large ensemble offering a fresh update to Hill's always adventurous sound. Laurence Donohue-Greene went overtime this month, with multi-faceted profiles of Dave Douglas's Witness at Tonic and the David Murray Octet at the Iridium. Laurence interweaves biographical information, references to recent recordings, and essential first-hand impressions of live performance. Finally, David Adler offers a madcap review of ten different live shows in New York--ranging from the acoustic bop of the Peter Bernstein trio (with special guest Joshua Redman) to the most peculiar stylings of Joel Harrison's Free Country.

Three time zones away, Long Beach (but a hop, skip, and a jump south of Los Angeles city proper) was the home for the Conference of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). The world's largest jazz gathering, IAJE took over the Long Beach Convention Center for four straight days in January. Naturally, All About Jazz put up a booth, and several of our people went to check out the awards, symposia, clinics, and (of course) jazz performances. Take a moment to inspect our publisher zipping along with his favorite comic book superhero, and you'll get a sense of the rollicking ride the conference provided its attendees.

Big Band Man Jack Bowers offers his impressions of the IAJE awards and several large-group performances, ranging from the Long Beach Polytechnic High School Jazz Ensemble to the Bob Florence Big Band. Not all big bands are created equal, and Jack definitely knows the difference. Jason West adopts a personal angle, reflecting on the state of jazz in 2002 (quite sobering) and pausing to touch on the handful of improvisers from the Pacific Northwest who made an impact at the conference. Craig Jolley wins the endurance award hands-down for his reporting on (yes, count 'em) 27 different shows over the course of the conference. We're thinking about testing Craig for performance-enhancing drugs, because his IAJE piece is the most complete we've seen anywhere. Finally, Ken Dryden (yes, our very own "Ask Ken") touches on a number of highlights from the conference, as well as a few shortcomings (first and foremost: "cell phone disease").

In addition to our Big City jazz coverage, we've also got a number of interesting features from the rest of the world. February marks the inauguration of Andrey Henkin's new column: Out-Of-Print. Andrey touches on a couple recordings from the German MPS label this month, providing reviews and helpful information about how to track these discs down. Phil DiPietro spent a long time in conversation with David Gilmore, and we've got every last word of the interview. The guitarist talks about his experience with the M-BASE collective, new and old influences, and future aspirations. Reality plays an important role here... as Gilmore puts it, "the greatest players in the world can be famous, or they could be fixing your sink."

That's all for now. Jazz in the Big City--and everywhere else, too. Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the February update of All About Jazz!