Alto and soprano saxophonist/composer Gary Bartz is an honors graduate of two of the most distinguished and demanding academies in jazz: the Universities of Art Blakey and Miles Davis. He'd also studied at Juilliard in New York and the Peabody Conservatory in his hometown of Baltimore. When Bartz (b. 1940) struck out on his own and formed his own band, Ntu Troop, and sought to increase his music's street credibility by placing it in a funky rhythmic context, the jazz critics, predictably, set… MORE