The Cool Concert Tour

There are a lot of really good jazz concerts going on in my general vicinity this spring, and Halfling and I decided to catch as many of them as possible. Not all of them are in Dallas, but they are at least within a five-hour drive of here. Though we had even more possibilities, we narrowed it down to four (five, if you count Diane Schuur last Saturday):

February 24: Phil Woods with the One O'Clock Lab Band and the UNT Faculty Combo (Winspear Hall, Murchison Performing Arts Center). A no-brainer; gotta catch this legend one more time.
March 12: "Directions in Music" featuring Michael Brecker, Herbie Hancock and Roy Hargrove, Cullen Theatre, Houston (yes, the same show is coming to Ft. Worth's Bass Hall two days earlier, but I have a conflict with a night class I'm teaching, plus Mom and Dad live in Houston).
UPDATE: Actually, we got the conflict resolved by turning the Bass Hall performance into a field trip for the combo, so we'll be catching it here on the 10th and saving the Houston trip for another time.
March 13: Pat Metheny Group, Nokia Theatre, Grand Prairie. I missed their last swing through town a few years ago and definitely wanted to catch them this time. Besides, the new CD (The Way Up, out yesterday, review coming soon) is really cool.
April 16: Kenny Garrett, Bates Recital Hall, UT-Austin. It's been a few years since I've seen him too, and, like all of the above, it'll be the first time for Halfling.

This has been in the planning stages for a while, but I didn't want to jinx it by posting about it before the tickets were all saved up for and ordered...plus I didn't want others to buy all of them up before that time (heh). But now they're all on the way, so I figured I'd share the news in case others didn't know about these shows. Reviews to follow, no doubt.