"Jazz's home is still an out-of-the-way little bar where saxophone lines entwine with curling wisps of smoke. That's fine with Roy Nathanson, the alto saxophonist. He has just released ''Fire at Keaton's Bar and Grill," a jazzy song cycle set in a fictitious dive.

"Mr. Costello handled his songs with an intimate vibrato; Ms. Harry sounded worldly and resilient, even as she spoke-sang phrases between the pointillistic dissonances of ''Cups.'' Darius de Haas and David Driver crooned a ''A Bend in the Night,'' the poised, slow-motion love duet of two theoretical physicists: ''a quantum embrace/let particles fly.''