When jazz musicians discuss their favourite players, one name that often comes up is the late great trumpet giant Freddie Hubbard. Even by the high technical standards of jazz, his work is awe-inspiring. He was what some jazzers call a conversation-stopper: a player who could make musicians in the club stop talking, even in the middle of a sentence, to avoid missing a note of his solos. And he had a full and varied career, recording many albums as a leader as well as playing in groups led by Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman, and Sonny Rollins, to name a few. He was a standout contributor to some of the most important albums in jazz history, including Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil. As this list shows, he was able to shine in pretty much every conceptual context - tonal, modal, or free. Here's a really cool clip of him with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, circa 1962: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4noNAphDFA8. And if you haven't heard even one of the albums mentioned above, you know what to do.