Jazz: The Young Lions

All you jazz cadets out there: your fast-track to the hippest of the hip starts here. Top of the heap is the great Wynton Marsalis, the trumpet sensation who initiated the "young lions" movement in the early '80s as a return to the melodic, acoustic roots of jazz and shook up a recording industry that rushed to sign fresh talent.

Once Wynton Marsalis had kicked down the doors, other young stars followed. Hard bop hero Roy Hargrove is a Marsalis protégé, and tenor saxman Joshua Redman ("Blues on Sunday") graduated from Harvard before landing a contract with Warner Bros. in 1991, and easily justified the considerable hype that surrounded him.

For those of you familiar only with the alpha names of contemporary jazz, it's time to discover some of the lions on the fringes of the pride: musicians like alto saxophonist Donald Harrison ("A Night In Tunisia"), who made his name with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and has spiced his jazz with an exotic blend of reggae and swing.

For your listening ecstasy, acquaint yourselves with the "young lions" of jazz, a tag originally coined in reference to the controversial revisionist work of Wynton Marsalis. Indeed, many of the artists we've included here come either directly from the Marsalis stable, like pianist Eric Reed, who first toured with the trumpeter at age 17 and would periodically return to his mentor's outfit, or indirectly, like Cassandra Wilson, who toured in 1997 with Marsalis' Blood on the Fields project.