[Opperioav]

I'm gonna move the analogy over to trombone players since I know them a little better. If you look at players 50+ years ao (Teagarden, Bennie Green, Sam Nanton etc) and players who started a while ago (Watrous, Fontana, Rosolino) etc.... they have a much more distinctive sound when compared to players today. Most East Cost players fall in the school of JJ (Steve Turree, Eubanks, Roseman etc) and the West Coast guys keep the Carl/Frank school going (Andy Martin, Bob McChesney etc) There are much fewer differences in basic tone production and technique. I think that sitting down and shedding just basic technique has made everyone sound much more the same then it did 50 years ago. Now you can still tell Lovano from Carter (or Wynton from Terance, or Steve Turree from Andy Martin......) but I think that those differences are much less, due on large part, by the attention to technique brought on my jazz schools. This isn't necessarily bad, it's just the way (I think) it is.