THE CHAMPAGNE WAS CANADIAN:

The Man Who Improvises With the Tenor Sax (PHILLIP LUTZ, 4/26/09, NY Times)

“Joe [Lovano] is much more spontaneous” than most musicians, said John Patitucci, a bassist from Westchester, minutes before taking the stage at Birdland, in Manhattan, where he joined Mr. Lovano’s quartet this month for the final night of a five-night engagement. That show, featuring bop to ballads, brought the packed house down.

Having seen the quartet perform earlier in the week, Gunther Schuller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and arranger, praised Mr. Lovano for his continuing spontaneity, inventiveness and imagination. “I don’t know of anyone who combines those three things at such a high level so consistently,” he said.

Mr. Schuller, 83, should know. He played French horn and did some conducting on Miles Davis’s seminal mid-20th-century LP “Birth of the Cool,” and adapted material from that record for Mr. Lovano’s album “Streams of Expression,” which was nominated for a Grammy in 2007.