The Jill Townsend Big Band from Vancouver, B.C., plays music by Ross Taggart; Dave Frishberg, John Gross and Charlie Doggett team up in Portland, and Randy Halberstadt and Chuck Deardorf have recent releases from Seattle on this week's episode of Jazz Northwest.

Highlights from an Art of Jazz concert by the Naomi Moon Siegel Band at The Seattle Art Museum, on the latest Jazz Northwest, feature the trombonist and composer in her original music with Wayne Horvitz, piano, Sean Woolstenhulme, guitar, Geoff Harper, bass, and Eric Eagle, drums.

Scenes, the northwest jazz trio with musicians hailing from Portland and Seattle whose sixth album "Destinations" was released on the Origin label last year.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and this week's Jazz Northwest combines Seattle artists with others from Cuba, Japan and Los Angeles.

By a quirk of fate and booking, two outstanding visiting big bands will play opposite each other in Seattle on two nights next week. From New York, The Captain Black Big Band led by Orrin Evans will be at The Royal Room, and from New Orleans, Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra will be at Dimitrious Jazz Alley.

This month's Art of Jazz concert presented by Earshot Jazz at The Seattle Art Museum featured the duo of pianist Marina Albero and bassist Jeff Johnson. Both contributed original music and shared improvisations on jazz classics by Wayne Shorter, Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk. In addition to the piano-bass duo, Albero also performed a solo on hammered dulcimer.

Probably the next best thing to hearing a jazz group playing live in a jazz club is a good recording of that performance. That's the latest offering from Vancouver, B.C., musician, presenter and label owner Cory Weeds. This quintet plays some relatively unfamiliar titles by Lee Morgan, Mal Waldron, Jackie McLean, Walter Davis Jr. and others in a new CD recorded in performance at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, B.C.

This week featrued several performances, not previously broadcast, as a special spring fundraising edition of Jazz Northwest. The show showcased performances by the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, Bill Anschell's Standards Trio, Kendra Shank and John Stowell, The Axiom Quartet, and an all-star group led by George Cables at Centrum's Jazz Port Townsend.

Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan were among the great singers of their generation. They all shared a love for the deep swing of the Count Basie Orchestra and made some great records with Basie. That was the inspiration for a recent set of concerts played by the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, as part of their season series.

Today on Jazz Northwest we highlight this month's Art of Jazz concert, which fell on Valentine's Day and featured an intimate duo with singer Kendra Shank and guitarist John Stowell.