Last month, Joel Siegel's esteemed Jazz Showcase brought in back-to-back trumpet titans, Roy Hargrove and Nicholas Payton. Now, the Windy City will witness another round of top brass wizardry with sequential appearances by three sax legends, Benny Golson (December 14-19), Frank Morgan (December 21-26), and David "Fathead" Newman (December 28-January 2). Look no farther for a thoroughly festive salute to the New Year. Combined, these giants of the bop generation have over a century of experience as performers, composers, and jazz educators, and at 70-something each, they show no signs of slowing down the tempo.

Benny Golson Quartet (December 14-19). Known worldwide as more than a virtuoso tenor player, Benny Golson has impeccable credentials as a composer, arranger, lyricist, producer, and educator as well. A native of Philadelphia, Golson studied piano, organ, clarinet, and tenor sax as a child. In an All About Jazz interview, Golson recalled, "I started out wanting to be a pianist and as I got into it I fancied that I wanted to be a concert pianist. That got a few chuckles in the ghetto, you know. But at 14, I heard the saxophone and my first influence was Arnett Cobb. I went to the theatre one day and I heard him play "Flying Home" and that changed my life. Then after that, of course, it was Coleman Hawkins, Don Byas, Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, and then John Coltrane and I went through the ranks together." With fellow Philly native Coltrane, Golson played weekends with a local band ("Jimmy Johnson and His Ambassadors") while still in high school, earning eight dollars per performance.

After attending Howard University in the late 1940s, Golson worked in Bull Moose Jackson's band. He then played in Tadd Dameron's band, and his affiliation with Dameron would have considerable impact on Golson's approach to composition ("I was amazed at what he could do with a small number of instruments..."). After working with Lionel Hampton (1953) and Earl Bostic (1954-56), Golson joined Dizzy Gillespie's band, building his reputation with his compositions "Stablemates," "Whisper Not," and "I Remember Clifford," the first of many that became jazz standards. With Gillespie, Golson also developed a solo style inspired by Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins.

In the late 1950s, Golson was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, and then the Art Farmer Jazztet, with both ensembles providing fertile ground for his compositions. From the late 1960s, he composed film and television scores, composed commissioned works for major studios, and continued his freelance performing and composing. Golson has written over 300 compositions and has recorded over 30 albums for a number of labels in the United States and Europe, under his own name and as sideman to numerous artists. He has arranged for a long list of well-known jazz performers, including Count Basie, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Shirley Horn, Oscar Peterson, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, and Mel Tormé; he has also arranged for popular artists including The Animals, Diana Ross, and Micky Rooney, and violin virtuoso, Itzak Perlman. His televison scores include MASH, Mannix, and Mission Impossible, as well as numerous special broadcasts for American productions and the BBC. As an educator, Golson has lectured at the Lincoln Center through a special series hosted by Wynton Marsalis, as well as at numerous universities, and has conducted clinics and workshops for music students all over the world. He has received honorary doctorates from William Paterson College and the Berklee School of Music. Golson has been the recipient of a Guggenheim grant and the 1996 American Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2001, he was honored at the Lincoln Center with a concert entitled, "The Magic of Benny Golson."

Now 75, Golson is hardly taking it easy, having completed a commissioned "Three Piano Composition" for Chicago's 2004 Ravinia Festival, and nearing completion of a commissioned orchestral work for the upcoming 100^th Anniversary of the Julliard School of Music. His most recent release, The Terminal (Concord, 2004), was noted to be as "expressive and buoyant as anything Golson was doing with Blakey's Jazz Messengers lineup fifty years ago" (E.J. Iannelli, All About Jazz), and featured his current working quartet of Mike LaDonne (piano), Carl Allen (drums), and Buster Williams (bass), as well as trumpeter and frequent collaborator, Eddie Henderson.

Notes Bob McCullough of the Boston Globe, "Virtually every solo by Golson is a textbook tour de force."