Summer Splash : CRITIC’S PICKS

The first big jazz event of the season, the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl (June 17-18), includes a few acts that offer something more than accompaniment for an outdoor party, including Benny Carter’s quartet and the Herbie Hancock trio. The festival’s highlight will be Bill Cosby’s band, the Cos of Good Music, featuring Stanley Turrentine, Christian McBride and one of the major emerging new saxophone stars, James Carter (June 18). You can also hear this remarkably accomplished young artist the following night at Catalina Bar & Grill.

Among other attractive Bowl events: a young lions get-together of Wynton Marsalis, Joshua Redman and Gonzalo Rubalcaba (Aug. 16); Joe Henderson and Joao Gilberto in an Antonio Carlos Jobim tribute (Aug. 23).

And don’t miss the soul-swinging piano of Cyrus Chestnut (June 5) and a rare appearance by Yusef Lateef with an 11-piece ensemble (June 16), the jazz-as-theater music of the Willem Breuker Kollektief (July 12), and the elegant sounds of the Roy Haynes quintet (Aug. 3)--all at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.