Slim, strikingly tailored and handsome, he is at 30 the proudest of the young peacocks in jazz. He may be the most talked about new saxophonist since Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane in the sixties -- for an individual sound that can be graceful or groovy and emotionally loaded.

He is also a collector of saxophones and master of many of them... and he is an authoritative historian of the practitioners on each one: the bass saxophone that the Belgian inventor Adolph Sax loved most; the baritone sax of Gerry Mulligan and Duke Ellington's Harry Carney; the tenor sax of Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry, the alto of Charlie Parker and Eric Dolphy, the soprano saxophone of Sidney Bechet and Johnny Hodges.

Presiding at the point where the tradition meets the future, saxophonist James Carter.