I don't talk a lot about jazz here and that's not right. It's a bit out of my standard comfort zone, but that's hardly an excuse. Good music transcends boundries of genre. I've actually been listening to quite a bit more jazz since my wife put a moratorium on heavy/screamy music in our home office. Go figure! The selections have been mostly the classics: Coltrane, Bird, Mingus, etc., but I do like to branch out into more modern stuff like John Zorn's Masada and the Swedish act Esbjörn Svensson Trio (EST). I'd listen to more, but honestly, I really have no idea where to start. Thank goodness bassist/bandleader Oskar Schönning got in touch. His new album "Happy jazz, please" (see the title track posted today) hits all the right notes, both figuratively and literally. The compositions and arrangements are firmly grounded in tradition, but Schönning's ensemble adds enough of their own pizazz that it's most definitely not a retread. I especially enjoy the liberal use of clarinet - it adds just the right amount of klezmer/Don Byron flair to the tracks. It also keeps things sounding fresh since I feel it's an underused/underappreciated instrument in the genre. Schönning's new album comes out today and he'll be playing a record release show tomorrow at the restaurant Landet, just outside of Stockholm. And don't forget to check out his contribution to the recently released "Fellow birds" 7" on Jezebel Recordings.