James Rivers is a well-respected long-time saxophonist on the local New Orleans contemporary jazz scene. He's also played plenty of rhythm-and-blues gigs and studio dates, but is best known as a "post-bop" jazz player.

James has a full size set of Scottish-type bagpipes and sometimes plays a couple of jazz numbers on them in the middle of his saxophone set. I've witnessed this a couple of times at the annual Jazz Festival, and I know he does it at occasional nightclub gigs, too.

I think he makes it point to avoid anything too harmonically complex, because the bagpipe drone never sounds too terribly out of place. It's pretty amazing to hear music that sounds more-or-less like John Coltrane's coming out -- loud! -- from that exotic instrument -- exotic, that is, in the context of a jazz trio or quartet (upright bass, drum kit, and maybe piano).