SFJAZZ Announces Lineup for Spring Season 2009

It's a little ways off yet, but the organizers at SFJAZZ are already getting revved up for the 10th Anniversary of their annual spring concert series. Here are just a few of the names they're dropping on us this year: McCoy Tyner, Branford Marsalis, Madeleine Peyroux, Bill Frisell, Ahmad Jamal, Jenny Scheinman, John Scofield, Branford Marsalis Quartet, Will Bernard, Mingus Dynasty with John Handy, Allen Toussaint, Michael Feinstein, Brad Mehldau, Roy Hargrove, James Carter, and Kenny Burrell. But SFJAZZ isn't strictly limited to jazz, of course, so there are some great international flavors to be sampled as well, including Malian blues-trance stars Tinariwen, Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Portuguese fado songbird Mariza, Brazilian songwriter CéU, and (apparently bipolar) Balkan Goran Bregovic's Wedding & Funeral Orchestra. For a more intensive list of musicians (as well as advance tix for collective members), go to the spring season website. -- J. Graham