"Adventures in Stickology" CD - Steve Adelson

Review by Emmett ChapmanGuest artists Tony Levin, Chieli Minucci, Ben Lacy, Dean Brown, Stephane Wrembel, Phil Degruy, Little Toby Walker, Donnie Celenza and Kerry Kearney.To the uninitiated, jazz appears as merely a musical style, with an overall sameness in sound, as in "all that jazz". The incredible diversity of jazz stylists and expression of individual personalities is usually missed.After witnessing a few jazz innovators and stylists in action, however, it finally sinks in - you can't ever pin this music down. More to the point, jazz is an idealized form of communication where everybody is free to talk at once in an agreed upon framework of harmony and rhythm, and if all goes well, everybody listens together too.You have to be "seasoned", of course, conversant in the general language in order to speak music and listen at the same time. Seasoned maturity is what Steve Adelson brings to his newly released CD, "Adventures in Stickology", a series of live duos with eight distinctive