Zan is awesome to interview with and hang out with. A great cat and a very nice tenor player himself….

Mike Lee lives the jazz life at Cecil’s

by Zan Stewart/The Star-Ledger

Thursday July 16, 2009, 12:26 PM

Like many professional jazz musicians, Mike Lee found hearing a major-league jazz artist in person to be a life-transforming experience, one that set him on the road he travels today. For the 46-year-old Cleveland native, who has evolved into a spirited, intelligent saxophonist, woodwind player, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator, it was a performance by the great tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin at Cleveland State University in 1978. Then a teenager, Lee, who had also been listening to records by saxophone powerhouses John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon, found that Griffin moved him in a special way…

read the whole story here:

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2009/07/mike_lee_lives_the_jazz_life_a.html