Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12 1940 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Academy Award and multiple Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist and composer. Hancock is one of jazz music's most important and influential pianists and composers. He embraced elements of rock, funk, and soul while adopting freer stylistic elements from jazz. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet", Hancock helped redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section, …

Bruce Lambourne Fowler is a prominent American trombone player and composer. He notably played trombone on many Frank Zappa records, as well as with Captain Beefheart, and in the Fowler Brothers Band. Currently, he composes and arranges music for movies, and has been the composer, orchestrator, or conductor for many popular films. Bruce is the son of jazz educator William L. Fowler and the brother of multi-instrumentalist Walt Fowler and bassist Tom Fowler.

John Francis "Jaco" Pastorius III (December 1, 1951 - September 21, 1987) was a bassist and songwriter widely acknowledged for his virtuosity of the fretless bass, as well as his command of varied musical styles and his many compositions. His playing style was noteworthy for containing "dazzling solos in the higher register" and "fluid machine-gun-like passages that demanded attention," often featuring his instrument in lead rather than rhythm section.

John Zorn (born September 2 1953 in Queens, USA) is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Though not well-known to the general public, Zorn's recorded output is astonishingly prolific, with hundreds of album credits as a performer, composer or producer. His work has touched on dozens of musical genres, …

Carl Craig is a Detroit-based producer of techno music, and is considered to be one of the most important names in the Detroit second generation of techno producers and DJs. Carl Craig has approached techno using inspiration from a wide range of musical genres, including jazz and soul. Carl Craig has released many successful albums under a large number of aliases, such as BFC, Psyche, Paperclip People, 69, Designer Music and Innerzone Orchestra.

Jeff Berlin (born January 17, 1953) is an American electric bass player. Since the mid-1970s, he has been known for his virtuosic jazz fusion and prog rock bass playing. Some consider him to be among the top living electric bass players.

Greg Howe (born December 8, 1963) is an American guitarist, originally from Easton, Pennsylvania. He began his career on Mike Varney's Shrapnel Records label in the 1980s, and emerged alongside other "shred" players such as Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert, Richie Kotzen, Tony MacAlpine and Vinnie Moore among others. However, Howe soon developed a more distinct style that was more rooted in jazz fusion than the neoclassical leanings of his contemporaries.

Dave Weckl (born January 8, 1960) is a highly acclaimed jazz fusion drummer. Weckl attended Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, MO and graduated in 1978. He majored in jazz studies at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. Starting out on the New York fusion scene in the early 1980s, Weckl soon found himself working with artists such as Paul Simon, Madonna, George Benson, Michel Camilo and Anthony Jackson.

Jim Pepper (b. Salem, Oregon, June 18 1941; d. Portland, Oregon, February 10 1992) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and singer of Native American ancestry. Beginning in the late 1960s, Pepper became a pioneer of fusion jazz, his band The Free Spirits (active between 1965 and 1968, with guitarist Larry Coryell) being credited as the first to combine elements of jazz and rock.

Trilok Gurtu (born in Bombay on 30 October 1951) is an Indian percussionist and composer who has also "crossed over" into jazz-rock fusion and world music genres. He has released his own albums and has collaborated with such artists as Terje Rypdal, John McLaughlin, Joe Zawinul, Bill Laswell, and Robert Miles. Trilok Gurtu's mother, the singer Shobha Gurtu, started him on the tabla and he later studied the instrument with Abdul Karim.

Cuong Vu (surname Vu; b. Saigon, South Vietnam, September 19, 1969) is a jazz trumpeter and vocalist. Born in Saigon, he left Vietnam with his family at the age of six in 1975, settling in Bellevue, Washington (an Eastside suburb of Seattle). He quickly learned English and adapted to his new country and culture. Although he still listened to the traditional Vietnamese music of his heritage, he also found the American pop music on the radio exciting.

Courtney Pine (born 18 March 1964) is a British jazz musician. At school he studied clarinet, although he is known primarily for his saxophone playing. Pine is a multi-instrumentalist, also playing the flute, clarinet and keyboards. His recent music has attempted to integrate modern British music like drum and bass and UK garage with contemporary jazz styles. He runs his own band and integrates many comtemporary musicians in his performances.

Christian McBride (born May 31, 1972, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a jazz bassist. His father, Lee Smith, and his great uncle, Howard Cooper, are well known Philadelphia bassists who served as McBride's early mentors. In the jazz community, McBride is widely considered to be one of the best bassists of his generation. McBride has performed and recorded with a huge number of jazz legends, including Diana Krall, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, …

Edgar "Eddie" Gomez (born October 4, 1944) is a Puerto Rican jazz Double bassist born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, perhaps most notable for his work done with the Bill Evans trio from 1966 to 1977. Gomez emigrated with his family at a young age to the United States of America and grew up in New York. He started on double bass in the New York City school system at the age of eleven and at age thirteen went to the "New York City High School of Music and Art".

Foday Musa Suso (b. Sarre Hamadi Village, Wuli District, in the Upper River Division of eastern Gambia) is a musician and composer from the West African nation of Gambia. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a "jali". His primary instrument is the kora, but he also plays the gravikord and several other instruments. Suso emigrated to Chicago in the 1970s, being one of the first "jali"s to relocate to North America.

Miroslav Ladislav Vitous is a Czech jazz bassist who was born in Prague. He began the violin at age six, and started playing the piano at age ten, and bass at fourteen. As a young man in Europe, Vitouš was a competitive swimmer. One of his early music groups was the Junior Trio with his brother Alan on drums and fellow Czech luminary-to-be Jan Hammer on keyboards. He studied music at the Prague Conservatory (under F. Posta), …

Jeremy Steig, the son of "New Yorker" cartoonist William Steig, is notable as one of the few jazz flutists playing flute exclusively, as opposed to doubling from other woodwinds (others are Hubert Laws, James Newton, and, for most of his career, Herbie Mann). After a start in mainstream jazz, with albums with Bill Evans and Denny Zeitlin, Steig became an early force in the jazz-rock fusion experiments of the late 1960s and early 70s.

Klaus Doldinger is a German saxophonist, especially well-known for jazz and as a composer of film music. He was born in Berlin, and entered a Düsseldorf conservatory in 1947, graduating in 1957. In his student years, Doldinger gained professional performing experience, starting in 1953 in the German Dixieland band "The Feetwarmers", and recording with them in 1955. Later that year he founded "Oscar's Trio", modeled on Oscar Peterson's work.

Jerry Hey is a trumpeter, flugelhorn player, horn arranger, and session musician. He is known as the Seawind trumpeter and arranger who plays with Kim Hutchcroft, Larry Williams and Bill Reichenbach. As a horn arranger Jerry Hey is one of the main creators of the modern pop and R & B horn sound. Along with the artist known as Tom Tom 84, Jerry Hey is responsible for the sounds that dominated the airways and charts from the mid '70s through the mid '80s.

Harold McNair (born November 05 1931 in Kingston, Jamaica - died March 07 1971 in Maida Vale, North London) was a renowned saxophonist and flautist.

Nils Petter Molvær is a Norwegian jazz trumpeter, composer and producer. He is considered a pioneer in the fusion of jazz and electronic music, showcased on his best-selling album "Khmer", released by the German record label ECM in 1998.

Craig Taborn is a piano, organ, and Moog synthesizer player primarily in jazz. Although he also does dark ambient and techno music. He has worked with jazz musicians Chris Potter, Nate Smith, Wayne Krantz, Adam Rogers, Tim Berne, members of The Bad Plus and also was in the Susie Ibarra Trio. He leads his own Craig Taborn trio as well.

Ken Hyder (born June 29, 1946) is a Scottish jazz fusion drummer and percussionist born in Dundee, Scotland, perhaps best-known for combining folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz. He has worked with and recorded with many musicians, including Elton Dean, Chris Biscoe, Tim Hodgkinson, Paul Rogers, Maggie Nicols, Don Paterson and Frankie Armstrong, among others.

Phil Wachsmann (born August 5, 1944) is an African avant-garde jazz/jazz fusion violinist born in Kampala, Uganda, probably better known for having founded his own group Chamberpot. He has worked with many musicians in the free jazz idiom, including Tony Oxley, Fred van Hove, Barry Guy, Derek Bailey and Paul Rutherford, among many others. Wachsmann is especially known for playing within the electronica idiom.

Fred Jackson, Jr. is a soul jazz / jazz fusion saxophonist who has recorded with a slew of jazz musicians as a sideman on albums, including musicians like Bobby Hutcherson, Earth, Wind & Fire, Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver and Solomon Burke, among others.

David "Fuze" Fiuczynski is an American guitarist, best known as the leader of the Screaming Headless Torsos and David Fiuczynski's KiF, and as a member of Hasidic New Wave. He has played on more than 95 albums as a session musician, band leader or band member. Though born in the United States, his family moved to Germany when he was 8 years old and remained until he was 19.

Urszula Dudziak is a leading Polish jazz vocalist. She has worked with such artists as Krzysztof Komeda, Michał Urbaniak (her ex-husband), Gil Evans, Archie Shepp, and Lester Bowie.

Percy Jones is a Welsh bass guitarist, and was a member of Brand X from 1974 to 1980. He appears sporadically with the band at reunion shows, most recently the 'Rebranded' tour of 1999. He currently is the bassist in the jazz/fusion band Tunnels, along with drummer John O'Reilly Jr. and midivibist Marc Wagnon.--DLA-- Jones is best known for his unique bass sound, and his trademark use of the fretless Wal bass. * Tunnels' official website