For the appreciation of jazz, context matters almost as much as the quality of the playing.
It takes a bit of getting used to, simply because its sound is so rarely heard in a jazz context.
On his new album, "Melaza" (Columbia Jazz/Sony), he continues in that vein, smartly using bits of traditional Puerto Rican instruments in a highly arranged jazz context.
The artistic director of the Orchestre, for a three-year term, is Daniel Yvinec, a polymath who studied bass in a jazz context in New York.
He continued to record in a jazz context on occasion and released a number of critically praised albums on the Xanadu label in the late 1970s.
The West African guitarist Lionel Loueke, who is from Benin, uses finger tapping and electronic techniques that add something new to Mr. Blanchard's straight-ahead jazz context.
In the summer of 1948, Davis formed a nonet that included the renowned jazz artists Gerry Mulligan, J.J. Johnson, Kenny Clarke, and Lee Konitz, as well as players on French horn and tuba, instruments rarely heard in a jazz context.
These forms fit seamlessly in a jazz context precisely because, in Mr. Weston's words, "the music that is called jazz... for me is really an extension of African culture".
In a "world jazz" context, Getz re-invented the swinging music he loved for a later, cooler generation, making a plausible alternative to the avant-garde experiments he despised.
(Pareles) EDMAR CASTANEDA (Tonight) The Colombian harp was not often heard in a jazz context until the teenage prodigy Edmar Castaneda began nudging its limits in the mid-90's.
On Saturday the excellent bassist Dezron Douglas brings his New Jazz Workshop; the bass-saxophonist Colin Stetson presents a solo set; the guitarist Rafiq Bhatia plays his intricate new jazz with rock dynamics; the bassist Omer Avital assembles his Band of the East, putting Middle Eastern and North African music inside a jazz context.
