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Best House Band

The Don Wilner Quintet

To hear these guys smoke through a number on Tuesday nights is to infuse your life with a sudden dash of Fifties cool. You'll walk away feeling sharper. You'll want to crease your trousers and wear shades inside. Eddie Higgins's fingers float over the keyboard like darting minnows in a tide pool. Gilly DiBenedetto summons mesmerizingly fluid tones from his sax. And Wilner sets the foundation for it all with his upright bass. Half an hour or so into the set, Tony Fernandez's gilded pipes warble Frank Sinatra tunes with such effortless grace, you'd think you had just stepped off the set of Ocean's Eleven. Master violinist Federico Britos ignites his strings. Depending on the night Lenny Steinberg or James Martin will be tapping the drums. Put a boutonniere in your lapel, snap your fingers, and order a martini. One word to the wise: Higgins, who has recorded with the likes of Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, spends his summers on Cape Cod. But fret not: He returns in the fall.

Best Local Jazz Artist

Jesse Jones, Jr.

Jazz critics like to carve up their chosen terrain into two diametrically opposed camps: musicians who play straight-ahead, and those who play "free." Miami saxophonist Jesse Jones, Jr., chooses to fudge this divide, and it's precisely that versatility that makes him such a delight to hear. Witness his occasional ensemble gigs at the Van Dyke Café. The band may start out on a faithful Cannonball Adderly-styled tip, casually working its way through some pleasant finger-snapping material. But just when you've eased back in your chair and gotten comfy, Jones will blow a playfully outré lick, simultaneously raising an eyebrow at the audience while slipping in a series of discordant honks to summon the group to take it up a notch. We're about to go somewhere special, Jones seems to be saying to the room, and you're all invited to come along.

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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