Grammy-winning drummer Terri Lyne Carrington has been haunted by Duke Ellington. More to the point, she’s been haunted since first hearing a recording she picked up in a discount bin around 2003. It was a trio recording featuring Ellington with bassist Charlie Mingus and drummer Max Roach: Money Jungle. That recording was a commentary on the ongoing battle between art and profit.

Carrington decided to bring in keyboardist Gerald Clayton and bassist Christian McBride to recapture the spirit of that recording, while making it fresh with her own interpretations. Money Jungle (Concord Jazz, 2013) features the trio with eight arrangements of Ellington’s music, plus two originals by Carrington and one by Clayton. Others who contribute here and there are Robin Eubanks, trombone; Tia Fuller, alto flute; Antonio Hart, flute; Nir Felder, guitar; Arturo Stable, percussion; Shea Rose and Lizz Wright, voice tracks; Herbie Hancock, the voice of Ellington on “Rem Blues/Music”; and Clark Terry, voice and trumpet on “Fleurette Africain.”

Korean singer Youn Sun Nah has been described by Le Monde newspaper as “a UFO touching the universe of jazz with a magnificent voice and passionate originality”. Too modest to admit to the magnificent voice bit, she accepts she’s different from your usual deep voiced and sultry jazz suspects.

A technically proficient singer with a distinctive style that straddles the line between Ella Fitzgerald’s extroverted, loosely swinging approach and Linda Eder’s more restrained Broadway and cabaret style, Jane Monheit is a virtuoso. One minute she’s dazzling you with her resonant bebop-ready chops and the next she’s making you cry with a single verse of a ballad. On her ninth studio album, 2013′s Heart of the Matter, Monheit brings all of her gifts to bear on a set of mature, heartfelt songs that rank among her best.

If you listen to contemporary jazz, then you already know that the “future happens now” – in jazz music it feels the best. Ensemble “Live People Band” is committed to the concept of contemporary jazz idiom in their debut album “Movement”. However, as it should be in any serious case, their roots of jazz are from its golden era 60′s – 70′s: the influence of ethnic psychedelics of Alice Coltrane and innovations by Miles Davis.

With the Crusaders he became famous far beyond the jazz scene, his song Street Life was a massive international disco hit, and he has proved to be a reliable provider of chart-breaking material, like One Day I’ll Fly Away for Randy Crawford.

He has recorded with a wide range of bands and musos, among them Canned Heat, Steely Dan, The Supremes, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and Eric Clapton.