Melba Liston

Every now and then--maybe when Jupiter aligns with Mars, or the moon is in the seventh house--a number of jazz players seem to spontaneously come up with similar ideas. This month is a good example. How else to explain the near-simultaneous release of albums featuring Dave Grusin, with orchestra, playing Henry Mancini; McCoy Tyner, with orchestra, playing Burt Bacharach; and Randy Weston, with orchestra, playing Randy Weston. OK, the Weston album is a bit different.

As its name implies, trumpeter-percussionist Jerry Gonzalez's Bronx-bred Fort Apache Band is an irreverent group of mavericks who explore the multicultural frontiers of urban jazz and Latin music. The six-piece Gonzalez ensemble will play the Ash Grove on the Santa Monica Pier Sept. 28 and 29. The group has pioneered a form of music that transcends the accepted Latin jazz category, exploring a variety of musical rhythms and influences, often in the course of a single Thelonious Monk cover.

What started out as a six-week gig at a jazz brunch has turned out to be one of the longest-running engagements in town for the Pat Britt-Wilbur Brown quintet. Sunday, the fivesome celebrates its fifth year at the Cat and Fiddle Pub and Restaurant in Hollywood. "Actually, we started Oct. 10," said Britt, a tall alto saxophonist with a resilient tone. "A friend, saxophonist Bo Svensson, was a chef there."

It was when he moved to Los Angeles in 1943 that Horace Tapscott, not yet 10 years old, realized that his mother wanted him to become a musician. "We got into Union Station," the 56-year-old pianist recalled, "and I was anxious to see where we'd be living. But before we went to the house, my mother took me to meet my new music teacher first. Can you imagine just getting into town and going right over to see the music teacher? That's when I knew she was really serious."

Samuel Browne never wrote a hit song or standard, never led a popular band or was widely recognized as a great instrumentalist. So why is local jazz pianist/composer Horace Tapscott calling his live radio performance for the Fringe Festival (airing tonight at midnight on KCRW-FM) a "Tribute to Samuel Browne"? In 25 years of teaching music at Jefferson High School from 1936-1961, Browne became a revered figure as an educator.

TELEVISION Ratings Bill Moving On: Reflecting dissatisfaction with existing TV ratings, the Senate Commerce Committee voted 19-1 Thursday to send on to the full Senate legislation to either require stronger TV ratings or ban violent shows altogether when children are likely to be watching. The move turns up the pressure on the TV industry to voluntarily strengthen its age-based ratings system, which began at the first of the year.

Los Angeles-based acoustic quintet Black/Note, whose major-label debut was 1994's "Jungle Music" on Columbia, has found a new home for its recordings. The group--bassist Mark Shelby, drummer Willie Jones III, saxophonist James Mahone, trumpeter Gilbert C. Castellanos and pianist Ark Sano--has just released "Nothin' but the Swing" on GRP's Impulse label. "I'm real happy about being on the Impulse label," Shelby says.

Bandleader Gerald Wilson's career as a composer-arranger began with a desire to be different. "When I was in high school back in Detroit, I was listening to all the bands that came through: Duke Ellington, Don Redman, Erskine Tate, Earl Hines and all the white bands as well: the Dorsey Brothers, Charlie Barnet, all of them," Wilson, 74, said in a recent phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. "And I thought I wouldn't want to sound like all the other bands around.

On Tuesday, Rhino Records is releasing "Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles (1921-1956)," a four-CD boxed set that has been assembled as a companion to the paperback version of the acclaimed book by the same name. Originally published in 1998 by the University of California Press, the oral history of the vital L.A. jazz scene was edited by Steven Isoardi, who was asked to co-produce the recording.

A few weeks ago, at the Hyatt on Sunset in West Hollywood, Ann Patterson's Maiden Voyage orchestra played to a crowded and enthusiastic roomful of music lovers. The ensemble spirit, the compositions and the soloists all represented big-band jazz at its highest contemporary level. What the audience didn't know was that none of the members can make a living simply out of working in this exceptional ensemble.