YELLOWJACKETS

The Yellowjackets, cutting-edge purveyors of innovative, eclectic jazz for twenty-five years, are agents of change. With every recording since their 1981 debut album - indeed with every note they've played in the studio and onstage since then - the Jackets have pushed the boundaries of improvisational jazz, and have been leaders in the music's inescapable evolution.

The story of the Yellowjackets' genesis is a series of creative lefts and rights with fortuitous results. Keyboardist Russell Ferrante, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Ricky Lawson first assembled as session players for jazz guitar virtuoso Robben Ford. The band renamed themselves the Yellowjackets, and released an album by the same name in 1981.

"There was no thought about whether this style should go with that one," Ferrante says. "Nothing was genre specific. It was just the music that we had all played - R&B music and electric music and acoustic music, blues, pop, the whole thing was just all music."

The band and its former leader Ford parted on amicable terms after the release of Mirage a Trois in 1984. By 1987, Lawson had left the band and was replaced by William Kennedy, whose polyrhythmic sensibilities opened doors to an even greater sense of exploration. The result was Four Corners, an album with a distinct world-music sensibility and one of the Yellowjackets' most commercially and artistically successful albums to date.

Subsequent albums - Politics (1988) and The Spin (1989) - took a more acoustic direction. Greenhouse, released in 1990, welcomed tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer into the Yellowjackets lineup. Throughout the '90s, the 'Jackets continued to explore a diverse cross-section of sound and rhythm.

The Yellowjackets entered the new millennium with their self released, Mint Jam. Recorded live at the Mint in Los Angeles in July 2001, the two-disc set was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Backing up the regular lineup of Ferrante, Haslip and Mintzer on Mint Jam is drummer Marcus Baylor, who has since become a permanent member of the band.

The Yellowjackets celebrated their milestone 25th anniversary in May 2006 with the CD/DVD release of the aptly titled Twenty-Five. And yet, beyond the milestone anniversaries and the polished multimedia releases that celebrate them, the Yellowjackets continue to look to the future.