Gentle Jazz Giants

"Jazz presented this idea that one could work one's entire life toward the perfection of one's craft," Beckenstein says. "And you know, what is the craft now? And who's trying to perfect anything? I think there's some kind of thing where... the idea of abstraction has kind of gotten lost. People want everything kind of handed to them. To me, the original beauty of music was that it was this entirely abstract entity. It wasn't about words; it was something that bordered on the divine."

It doesn't help that the band's absence from the pop charts has some of Spyro Gyra's former fans believing that the group has vanished off the musical radar.

"I hate it when I find people like that," Beckenstein says in frustration. "You know, I'm doing my darnedest to let people know we're still doing it. So when people come up to us and go, 'Gosh, I didn't know you were still around — you guys sound great,' that's well and good, but I'm sorry you kind of lost track of us, because we've been working hard the whole time."