As for the concerts:

Thursday, Jan. 5
Age is one of 82-year-old Mose Allison’s lyrical preoccupations...and one of his distinctions. The singer/pianist was born in Mississippi at a time when jazz and blues were more or less interchangeable—and in his music, they still are, along with R&B and even postwar pop crooning. Though Allison says his genre-blurring has made it difficult to maintain a steady audience, those who’ve remained loyal include Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russell, The Who, and The Pixies. It's a long string of generations that's been listening to Mose—but that says everything about his consistency and nothing about his energy. Allison’s got a furiously rhythmic, blindingly piano technique, and his voice, wise but youthful, has the knowing wink of a southern man who still knows how to get down. He makes the advancing years seem all but irrelevant. Allison performs with his trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. $25.

Saturday, Jan. 7
Setlist hearts Elijah Balbed. Did you notice? We get excited about his work as a leader, as a sideman, and as the vanguard of the youngest generation of DC jazz saxophonists, and we're not shy about saying so. We are thrilled to hear the new album he's promised for 2012 (more on that story as it develops), and just as thrilled about his new band, a quintet. It's a—relatively straightahead assemblage that features Samir Moulay on guitar, Andrew Adair on piano, Gavin Fallow on bass, and Lee Pearson II on drums. That "relatively" is an important qualifier, though: Balbed often leads the group through a set of standards, but they don't let it restrain them from taking the music in strange and adventurous new directions. The Elijah Balbed Quintet performs at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th St. NW. $15.

Sunday, January 8
It may seem strange to recommend Eric Johnson, a guitarist who flaunts his debt to Jimi Hendrix and his blues-guitar-pioneer predecessors loudly and proudly, in this column. In fact, it's not too far-fetched at all. Johnson's breakthrough came when he was the guitarist for Austin area fusion band The Electromagnets—and in fact, his artistic development stems less from Hendrix than from John McLaughlin, the man who adapted Hendrix's innovations for the Fusion Era. You can hear it in his clear, tasteful, deceptively complex lines, even when he's singing blues-rock songs: This man is a craftsman, a technician, a guitarist's guitarist made for the delicacy and details of jazz, and it shows. Eric Johnson performs at 7:30 p.m. at The Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Avenue in Alexandria. $35.

Wednesday, January 11

Rodney Richardson is one of the area's premiere jazz guitarists. He has regular gigs in the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra with the Funk Ark, last year co-conducted a sharp experiment with trumpeter Joe Herrera via the "Sunday Jazz Lounge," and is a favorite sideman around the city. But his own major project, the Rodney Richardson Organ Trio, has been on the sidelines recently. That changes in 2012, with the organ trio roaring back into Twins Jazz to take its rightful place as the cream of D.C.'s soul-jazz crop. Richardson is accompanied by Will Rast, easily the organ king of Washington, and Larry Ferguson, the hard-driving drummer who proves that you can lay out soul on the trap kit. And admit it, you've been longing for that gritty, churchy, irresistably groovy sound of the organ trio to hit your ears again. The Rodney Richardson Trio performs at 8 and 10 p.m. at Twins Jazz, 1344 U St. NW. $10.

Photo: Allie Carroll.

Friday, Sep. 30
With certain musical innovations, we can look back and can see it was just a matter of time before someone thought of that; others are so outside-the-box that they still startle us and make us say, "Wow. Where the hell did that come from?" Gary Burton's decision to beef up his vibraphone playing from the standard two mallets to four ranks in the latter camp. It's completely counterintuitive, not just to the vibes but to the basics of human motor skill. Nevertheless, Burton developed the technique, and revolutionized the way his instrument is played. Meanwhile, Burton has been consistently progressive as a quartet leader; the early configurations cut important inroads into what became fusion, including elements of country music from Burton's tenure as a Nashville session man. The current version of the Gary Burton Quartet is almost ludicrously hip: guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Antonio Sanchez. They've got edgy rhythm as well as layers of lyricism, shrouded in a delicacy that tempts you to underestimate them. Do not. The Gary Burton Quartet performs at 8 and 10 p.m. at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. $35.

Photo: Tom Beetz

Sunday, October 2
Sunday is a pretty big day for D.C. jazz, with two of its most skillful and consistent artists holding release parties for their new recordings. The best part? The scheduling for these two concerts, by accident or by design, is staggered such that you can see them both without too much trouble.

Reginald Cyntje is, despite formidable competition, the District's most prominent jazz trombonist. A native of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Cyntje is deeply immersed in the Caribbean rhythms he grew up with, as well as an abiding love and dexterity for the school of bebop. There are natural affinities between those musical traditions, of course, but Cyntje adds another layer of bond between them, via his own artistic maturity. He's a wise player, in his mid-thirties already a seen-it-all/done-it-all veteran of Washington jazz and one who loves to play, but subserviates his own agenda to that of the full ensemble and to what the songs themselves have to offer. That includes standards as well as Cyntje originals, which you'll find on his CD, Freedom's Children: The Celebration. Cyntje celebrates its release with 7 and 9 p.m. sets at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th St. NW.

Across town you'll find the woman who, as I've argued before, might be the city's finest jazz singer. Lena Seikaly is a surprise every time she opens her mouth; her demeanor, onstage and off-, is girlish and polite, and it leaves one unprepared for the powerful belting-out of her rich contralto voice. Siekaly's vocal articulation is impeccable; her delivery sultry; her rhythm, deceptively sharp; her taste, delectable. Her CD The Lovely Changes features well-selected tunes by Aimee Mann, Brian Wilson, and Elliott Smith, in addition to pieces from the jazz songbook and likable pieces by Seikaly herself—a highly respected composer in D.C. circles. She performs at 8 and 10 p.m. at Blues Alley. $20.

Tuesday, October 4
It's hard to know where to start with Pat Metheny. He's one of the most accomplished guitarists on planet Earth. He's a musical adventurer, exploring a range of sounds from fusion to new age to postbop to Ornette Coleman's harmolodics. He's a great conceptualist, as anyone who heard or saw his Orchestrion project from last year needs no reminder. Less remarked upon, however, is Metheny's prowess as a composer. Strathmore seeks to rectify this unnoticed contribution by including Metheny in its "Celebrating American Composers" concert series, which brings Metheny to the Music Center in a sparse, intimate affair that nods to his new solo-guitar release What's It All About (Nonesuch). However, the concert is not a solo performance; it pairs him with bassist Larry Grenadier, a frequent collaborator and favorite of many jazz players. They perform together at the Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane in North Bethesda. $38-68.

Wednesday, Oct. 5
Teddy Charles was the perfect vibraphonist for the era in which he became prominent. He hit the jazz scene in the early '50s just as two major movements were getting started: the "Cool" school, which brought him bicoastal demand and acclaim at a time when Los Angeles was competing with New York as a jazz mecca; and third-stream music, the weaving together of jazz and classical elements that was intriguing musicians like John Lewis and Charles Mingus. Charles worked with them all, playing his instrument with a percussive tack, but also a spacious, quiet one that might even be described as "dark." It would serve him well as he established his own 10-piece "tentets," which was populated with East and West Coasters as well as more classically oriented timbres (french horn was a favorite) and playing classically inflected compositions. He's long been retired (or semi-retired, depending on when and whom you ask) from the music world, but Charles' latest of his always-welcome comebacks includes a stop this week in our town, with a tentet comprising local favorites that include saxophonists Sarah Hughes and Brad Linde, guitarist Rodney Richardson, and drummer Tony Martucci, among others. The Teddy Charles Tentet performs at 8 p.m. at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. $35

In preparing this week's Jazz Setlist, I dropped a line to guitarist Rodney Richardson, the co-leader and co-mastermind (with trumpeter Joe Herrera) behind Sunday Jazz Lounge at Twins Jazz. Since March, the weekly program presented Herrera and Richarson's quartet along with a solo opener, who usually later joined the quartet onstage. "Who's the soloist this week?" I asked.

"Well, no one," he replied. "The SJL is now defunct."

Richardson and Herrera have been out of town for a month, touring the west coast with The Funk Ark in support of their album From the Rooftops. For the first two weeks, tenor saxophonist Brian Settles filled the Sunday slot at Twins; however, scheduling conflicts for all involved ended the gig.

The Sunday Jazz Lounge was designed specifically for Twins; while it traveled around to substitute venues for a couple months this spring, Richardson says there's no feasible permanent substitute.

While nothing is yet set in stone, says Richardson, "Joe and I are working to continue putting on similar events in the near future." Meantime, Twins has not yet updated their listings to exclude the Sunday Jazz Lounge.

Photo by Allie Carroll

Saturday, July 2
It might not be out of line to suggest that Ben Williams is the face of a new golden age in D.C. jazz. The New Yorker-by-way-of-Michigan Park came up working with local bass gurus Michael Bowie, Herman Burney, and Carolyn Kellock before moving onto Michigan State University, Juilliard's Jazz Studies program, and finally the Big Apple jazz scene, where he played with edgy young musicians like Stefon Harris and Marcus Strickland, as well as straightahead artists like Jacky Terrasson and Terrell Stafford. Then he won the 2009 Thelonious Monk Competition for bass, and immediately graduated from insider's favorite to The One To Watch. Well, this week in D.C., your chances to do exactly that are double. Williams' dynamic debut recording as a leader, the fittingly titled State of Art (Concord Jazz), came out Tuesday. The weekend, as well, is a homecoming party for the CD's release. This one is the event of the week. The Ben Williams Quintet performs at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th St. NW. $18.

Photo: Jati Lindsey.

Sunday, July 3
On the other hand, maybe gigantic would be better applied to the sound of Greg Boyer's trombone. As I've said many times before and will gladly say again, Boyer could blow a hole through a brick wall. He's got power like you've rarely heard in your life, and he harnesses it to a spectacular sense of melody and funky groove. That's how you get a gig being the lead trombonist and horn arranger for none other than Prince, Boyer's erstwhile boss; he also did some time in the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, and also plays behind Chuck Brown, Big Band Caliente, and his own funk-jazz bands, Greg Boyer Peloton and Greg Boyer Pocket Jazz. Less traveled for Boyer, however, is the solo route; that's where the Sunday Jazz Lounge comes in. The weekly showcase for the Joe Herrera/Rodney Richardson Quartet and a rotating cast of solo openers has been on a monthlong hiatus throughout June, but in July they're back with a vengeance—and a permanent home. It starts at 8 p.m. at Twins Jazz, 1344 U St. NW. $5.

Wednesday, July 6
It wouldn't be quite so fair to call Rene Marie "gigantic," though. The Denver vocalist has got power behind her, no doubt, but it comes through in a subtle, breath-gilded voice that depends on emotional and dictional nuance. In short, it's about softness and how she forms her words. That's how it is on record, anyway; in person, Rene has a deeply expressive physical dimension; she moves her head and body to the music (much of it original, lots of it swinging) in a way that drives home the rhythms as indispensably as the sounds of the instruments do. Like Janine Gilbert-Carter, she doesn't confine herself to jazz; Marie's new album, The Voice of My Beautiful Country, takes her into rock, R&B, and folk songs as well, done in a fashion that's somewhere between jazz and neosoul but every inch her own. It's a feathery, beautiful music that is mesmerizing at every turn. Rene Marie performs at 8 and 10 p.m. at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. $25.

Friday, April 22

If CapitalBop gets a lot of play in this column, it's because CapitalBop is relentless. Giovanni Russonello and his cohorts are hell-bent on giving a jolt to the ever-more-rich DC jazz scene, and their most powerful (and increasingly frequent) tool for doing so is to provide a live showcase for the city's best and most energetic musicians to show off their abilities before the public. Mount Vernon Square's Red Door loft has been their venue of choice since last fall, but this week finds them branching out to one of the newest jazz spots in town: Bayou, the New Orleans-themed restaurant in Foggy Bottom that's adjacent to the former One Step Down jazz club. Local saxophone dynamo and City Paper favorite Elijah Balbed holds court there every weekend with his quintet; this week, Balbed is a member of the free-floating collective CapitalBop has organized as "The U Street All-Stars," in this case an octet that also features trumpeter Joe Herrera, saxophonist Brent Birckhead, guitarist Rodney Richardson, pianist Noble Jolley, bassist Blake Meister, and drummers Nate Jolley and Allen Jones. They hit at 11 PM at Bayou, 2519 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. $5.

Saturday, April 23
Marc Cary has never been content with the jazz sound of his native DC—or, for that matter, of his native America. In fact, the pianist's not content to even play one tradition of jazz at a time. Cary leads the Focus Trio. His bassist, David Ewell, draws on his Chinese heritage in his spatial and harmonic technique; Sameer Gupta, the drummer, doubles on the tabla and also mixes Indian coloration into his traps (and put out an extraordinary album of his own; and Cary himself makes use of his Native American ancestry as well as African-American traditions in his composing and improvising. The effect isn't some bright-colored explosion of multiethnic jazz, mind you. It's just got some more complex structures and more intricate rhythmic interplay from the musicians than your average piano trio. Cary also loves a groove, and will slip in some go-go when you're not expecting it. Marc Cary's Focus Trio performs at 8:30 and 10:30 PM at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th Street NW. $22.

Sunday, April 24
Drummer Alison Miller grew up in the D.C. area, graduating from Sherwood High School in Olney before becoming an extremely prolific and diverse player in New York. Just about the only thing Miller doesn't do, in fact, is play it safe. Case in point, her new project The Honey Ear Trio, in which she collaborates with saxophonist Erik Lawrence and bassist Rene Hart. Saxophone trios are all the rage these days, which means the Honey Ear Trio have to subvert the template: Hart uses electronics to manipulate, loop, and otherwise mess around with the sounds he makes on his bass; it's sort of like a sax trio with a bionic appendage. Not that they'd be a terribly conventional band anyway; the forms of the tunes they create, along with their approach to performing on their individual instruments, are as warped and oblong as a penny smashed on the railroad tracks. But no trainwrecks to be had here. The Honey Ear Trio performs at 8 PM at Bossa. $5.

Saturday kicks off a new weekly series of jam sessions beginning at midnight. Longtime Caverns patrons will recall that, for a few years, the club had a Friday late-night jam session featuring the D.C. trio The Young Lions. Those ended in 2009, but owner Omrao Brown has decided to give it another shot on Saturday, when clubgoers are more likely to stay out late. This Saturday features The Jolley Brothers, but the jams will rotate regularly between the Jolleys, the Young Lions, and Will Rast's organ trio. It's a welcome addition to a D.C. jam-session culture that's getting ever deeper.

Sunday offers more of a change of pace for an existing feature. The Sunday Jazz Lounge, the weekly gig by the Joe Herrera/Rodney Richardson quartet that premiered in March at Twins, has been a big success with its stellar band and novel addition of an opening soloist. Unfortunately, Twins was booked every Sunday in April. Thus, guitarist Richardson has announced that the lounge is moving, at least for this week, to the Caverns. (Guest soloist this week TBA.) There's no indication that this will be a permanent home—but one way to help ensure that is a big turnout at the 8 and 10 p.m. sets. $5.

Thursday, March 24
You could be forgiven if his nearly 20-year association with Jay Leno made you think Kevin Eubanks was a mediocre hack, too—forgiven, but you wouldn't be correct. Before he Jaywalked, guitarist Eubanks (the second of three musical brothers from Philadelphia) was a member of the M-Base Collective, the Brooklyn-based pool of musicians who made revolutionary musical and rhythmic structures in the 1980s. As a soloist, though, he's tended toward the fusion domain, albeit with a refreshingly progressive current running through it. The rock-ish textures still fool some critics into thinking Eubanks has watered his sound down, labeling his latest album, Zen Food (Mack Avenue), as pop-jazz; if you're tempted to agree, listen to Zen Food yourself...and try to hum any of the tunes you hear. Better yet, go see him play! Kevin Eubanks performs at 8 and 1 p.m. at Blues Alley, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. $30.

Friday, March 25
Donvonte McCoy first appeared in this column two weeks ago when he was appearing in a solo set at Twins; at the time, I praised his "fluid, bouncy legato line, blinding speed...and hearty quicksilver tone on his horn." Having heard that solo set, I have to qualify my description. No question of his fluidity or legato (though McCoy also has some staccato tendencies), but his playing also has a tremendous capacity for languid, deliberate pace, and his tone has a smoky undertone both on trumpet and flugelhorn. His range, in other words, is wide and magnificent. That's apparent in the sets he performs weekly with his quintet at Eighteenth Street Lounge, where large insertions of funk and hip-hop, and the soulful stylings of singer Mavis Waters, infiltrate his spacey jazz music. It's something special. The Donvonte McCoy Quintet performs at 10:30 p.m. at Eighteenth Street Lounge, 1212 18th St. NW. $10.

Sunday, March 27

One of my items in this week's Best Of D.C. issue ("Best Instrument: Bass") inspired an open question from walking jazz library Larry Appelbaum: "What ever happened to Marshall Hawkins?" What an opportune time to ask! Hawkins is performing at a homecoming concert this weekend. He's sharing top billing with New Orleans clarinetist Evan Christopher; both of them work with Christopher's ensemble Clarinet Road. Christopher is a deep scholar of the clarinet styles that flourished in the early jazz of New Orleans, and has built his career on extending the elements of those sounds into the contemporary jazz milieu—accordingly, he calls his music "contemporary early jazz." Christopher got his musical education at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts near Palm Springs, Calif.—which is how he met Hawkins, the D.C. native and bassist who has been the school's jazz head since 1985. Teacher and student bring it home at 4 p.m. at All Souls Unitarian Church, 16th and Harvard streets NW. $20.

Tuesday, March 29
It's probably no surprise to anyone who watches jazz these days that Radiohead's oeuvre is popular and fertile ground for jazz musicians. Brad Mehldau's piano renditions are the stuff of myth at this point, and on the best album of last year, Christian Scott's Yesterday You Said Tomorrow, the best track was a cover of Thom Yorke's "The Eraser." Well, D.C.'s jazz musicians are as eager to blaze those trails as anyone else, and a group of the most adventurous among them— tenor saxophonist Bobby Muncy, trumpeter Joe Herrera, guitarists Rodney Richardson and Greg Loman, bassist Blake Meister, drummer Larry Ferguson, and vocalist Lena Seikaly—have come together under the auspices of the "Radiohead Jazz Project." Their mission, obviously, is to explore the British band's work in depth. Given the players involved, it can't help but be a stirring encounter. The Radiohead Jazz Project performs at 8 and 10 p/m/ at Twins Jazz, 1344 U St. NW. $10.

Sunday Jazz Lounge

If you haven't seen the Joe Herrera-Rodney Richardson Quartet yet, you're missing out. There are few sounds in the District of Columbia that are more lovely than Herrera's trumpet and Richardson's guitar playing a melody in tandem—especially if the melody is one of Herrera's sumptuous originals. The rhythm section is pretty special, too. Eric Harper is fond of the bass' middle range, and plays around it with a fantastic staccato virtuosity. Dave McDonald, meanwhile, is a monster; he plays sometimes with the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra (along with Herrera and Richardson), but that ensemble doesn't afford him quite the room to work out that he has at Twins, where he plays with the force (and sometimes the volume) of a wrecking ball.

What makes this week stand out, though, is the Sunday Jazz Lounge's trademark solo opening act. This third installment features one of Washington's supreme musicians on any instrument: tenor saxophonist Brian Settles. His serpentine style (with a hidden layer of muscle) is remarkably compatible with mainstream jazz, funk and R&B, and the furthest reaches of the avant-garde (he works regularly with Brooklyn guitarist Mary Halvorson and trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson). The very idea of a solo Settles set is captivating. And for $5, how can you go wrong?

Washington Women in Jazz Festival
You may recall that when the festival opened on March 2, I called vocalist Lena Seikaly "one of the contenders for D.C.'s best singer." One other person could make a claim for the title, and it's Jessica Boykin-Settles. Married to the aforementioned Brian, she possesses a clear alto voice, incredibly precise technique, and beautiful control; she can sing soft and sultry, as though beckoning from inside a dark room, or joyous and free, whatever the tune demands. It'd be something to see her and Seikaly duke it out on stage, but it's hard to argue with this lineup: Boykins-Settles will split the stage with the powerhouse baritone saxophonist Leigh Pilzer, a magnetic player whose sleek but barreling sound is probably as close as we'll ever come to harnessing the spirit of bari innovator Harry Carney. They'll play each other's sets, too, accompanied by pianist Amy Bormet, bassist Karine Chapdelaine, and drummer Lydia Lewis. $15 and worth every penny.

Twins is located at 1344 U St. NW.

Saturday, March 12
Much like Ron Carter (who, incidentally, will be in town next month), Robert Glasper will always get a plug from me when he's in town. The favorite hip-hop keyboardist is one of the most impressive jazz talents of his generation. Hearing his gymnastic piano style is like riding a rocketship through jazz harmonies; when he switches to electric keyboards he breaks new ground in rhythm, as well as melodic and harmonic washes that feel like dark, dreamy impressionistic murals of sound. Though he never abandons his lyricism, which is frequently playful even in its stateliest presentations, Glasper's an experimenter, an explorer, and a fearless one. Hence, every appearance is different from the last, and promises some newly discovered musical dimension that will transform how you hear him. That's why he gets mentioned in this column every time he plays, and why you should by God go hear him every time he plays too. Glasper and his band perform at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11th St. NW. $22.

Sunday, March 13
D.C. trumpter Donvonte McCoy has a sensibility not unlike Glasper's, in the sense that he is an experimenter who grabs hold of whatever sound or texture he can use. But he's got the heart of a traditionalist, and expresses it with a fluid, bouncy legato line, blinding speed in the Dizzy Gillespie/Jon Faddis lineage, and hearty quicksilver tone on his horn. The alumnus of the New School and of Howard University (where he played with both the Jazztet and HUJE) is one of the best musicians in Washington, and has long deserved much more attention from the Jazz Setlist. If you haven't seen McCoy already (either as a sideman or in his primary guises as jam-session leader at HR-57 and quintet leader on Friday nights at Eighteenth Street Lounge), here's a rare chance to hear his music unadorned, bare and intimate. McCoy is the featured soloist opening this week's Sunday Jazz Lounge, the program at Twins Jazz on Sunday nights. Come for McCoy's solo trumpet, stay for the Joe Herrera-Rodney Richardson quintet that will play two sets afterward. The show begins at 8 p.m. at Twins, 1344 U St. NW. $5.

Saturday, March 5
Seen Clint Eastwood's biopic Bird? The one starring Forrest Whittaker as Charlie Parker? You may have been impressed by the saxophone playing in it; but it wasn't Whittaker, or Parker. It was Charles McPherson, who shares Parker's hard-edged alto sound but has a bite that Bird never developed in his playing. McPherson was no obscurity even then; raised in the then-potent Detroit jazz scene, he worked throughout the post-bop era with greats like pianist Barry Harris and Charles Mingus (in particular, he can be heard on Mingus' large-ensemble, large-scale works of the '60s and early '70s, like Town Hall Concert and Let My Children Hear Music). Today he is an esteemed elder statesman of jazz, and his sharp sax tone remains as compelling and unique as ever. That proud place in the canon now puts him onstage at D.C.'s finest jazz venue, with one of its most invigorating piano trios. Charles McPherson performs with the Larry Willis Trio at Bohemian Caverns, 2001 11 St. NW. $25.

Sunday, March 6
There's been a lot of talk 'round here lately of the Sunday Jazz Lounge, Twins Jazz's weekly program during the month of March. To quickly recap: Sunday nights, for two sets at 8 and 10 p.m., trumpeter Joe Herrera and guitarist Rodney Richardson, already two of the District's most accomplished and busy players, lead a quartet (joined by bassist Eric Harper and drummer Dave McDonald). They'll be working an unusual repertoire, a blend of Herrera and Richardson's originals and less-heard pieces from the jazz archives. On top of that, however, they've invited a list of solo openers to play their own music, unaccompanied. For their opening night, pianist Harry Appelman had been scheduled, though he has been replaced with the great violinist Matvei Sigalov who is also a formidable composer. It'll be fantastic to hear him doing solo renditions. The Sunday Jazz Lounge kicks off this week at 8 and 10 p.m. at Twins Jazz, 1344 U St. NW. $5.

Wednesday, March 9
Speaking of Twins Jazz, this week it saw the opening of the inaugural Washington Women in Jazz Festival. It started off with a bang, stellar sets by the swooping trombonist Melissa Gardner (whose vibrato technique is a thing to behold) and the terrific vocalist Lena Seikaly (who'll floor you with her killer version of Beck's "Tropicalia"). This week, the ante is upped. First on the bill is Amy K. Bormet, the pianist and vocalist who organized the festival. Bormet, in addition to being one of the funniest people you'll ever see on a bandstand, is a brilliant piano player, with an uncanny melodic sense that she augments by audibly singing along with her solos; a profound composer, where she applies that melodic sense to lush compositions and arrangements; and a gifted but idiosyncratic singer whose high voice has a curiously 1930s-throwback feel. Joining Bormet is Karine Chapdelaine a bass player and alum of both McGill and Howard University's music programs. Now based in D.C., Chapdelaine has a sound that is confident and strident without quite being "aggressive"; she simply knows what she's doing and sees no need to push it in your face, since she'll impress the hell out of you anyway. Bormet and Chapdelaine will appear in each other's sets at 8 and 10 p.m., respectively, at Twins Jazz, 1344 U St. NW. $15.

Twins Jazz photo: soulofamerica.com