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.

Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage (1965) is often considered among the very best recordings in jazz history, and you'd get no argument from me. On every level, the album is wonderful. Its central concept, the relationship between the forces that govern the seas and those that govern music, seems to have inspired everyone involved. The album's five pieces, all written by Hancock, have become jazz standards, covered by musicians everywhere, each one unique and timeless. The quintet was composed of the some of the greatest musicians in jazz (then and now): Hancock on piano, George Coleman on saxophone, Tony Williams on drums, Ron Carter on bass, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet. The recording engineer, Rudy Van Gelder, found the essence of their sounds both individually and collectively. Here's a link to the title track, with its lurching rhythm taking us into the waves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmRQ0PBtXU