Music

The Five Tops

Jazz is alive and thriving, but you have to know where to look and what to look for. The record industry is so numbed by commercial pressures that young American jazz artists have a rough time finding an audience. Yet somehow they do. WYNTON MARSALIS, for example, is the phenomenal trumpet virtuoso from New Orleans who at twenty-two has recorded prizewinning albums of jazz and classical music. (He often performs with saxplaying brother BRANFORD.) Whereas Marsalis has the backing of a major record label (Columbia), HILTON RUIZ, a gifted thirty-one-year-old New York-born pianist who made his Carnegie Recital Hall debut at eight, typifies the new American jazz musician, playing in small clubs for a loyal following and making records in Europe. CARMEN LUNDY is a twenty-nine-year-old singer from Florida who has been appearing in New York nightclubs for five years and has built an impassioned coterie with her throaty contralto and a repertoire that includes her own songs as well as standards. BOBBY McFERRIN, at thirty-four, is a mainstay of San Francisco’s nightlife, and a different kind of performer, specializing in wordless vocals that combine jazz, blues, and pop; his range is considerable, he is spectacular a cappella, and he even engages adventurous instrumentalists in duets.

We asked the Japanese artist Yosuke Kawamura, who has portrayed Doris Day and Kenzo, as well as musicians of the East and West, to paint these young stars as they rise.