When Carl Clements isn’t teaching saxophone and improvisation at Amherst College, the multi-talented artist is traveling the world – U.S. Europe, Asia, Middle East, South and Southeast Asia – soaking up global cultures and sharing his gifts on tenor and soprano sax and exotic flutes, including the bansuri, an ancient side-blown bamboo flute originating from the Indian subcontinent, with roots tracing back over 2,000 years to Indian and Nepali folk tradition. This exotic wind

Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2022, the Van Gelder Studio is the most iconic recording studio in jazz history, giving rise to the “Van Gelder Sound” characterized by warmth, clarity and intimacy that defined the catalogs of Blue Note, Prestige and Impulse! while hosting legendary sessions for John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and countless other legends. While achieving a longtime dream, Dave Stryker’s first immersion into this sacred space, the

Kosovo born vocalist and songwriter Maja Jaku has made exquisitely intimate and charmingly swinging jazzy waves in her native Europe for years, touring with her trio, performing with the Austrian fusion band Attack, performing in musicals and releasing four acclaimed albums. On her intriguingly titled debut American collection Blessed and Bewitched , she shares those magnificent, deeply lived vocal passions and cool soulful strutting with U.S. audience for the first time, art

In addition to establishing himself as one of Southern California’s most versatile and prolific jazz composers and guitarists, Doug MacDonald uses his multi-faceted discography to serve as something of a regional tour guide over the past decade. While his 2021 album Live in Hawaii was the Philly native’s nod to growing up in the Aloha State, he’s otherwise been strumming, swinging, bopping and booming in locales familiar to SoCal jazz fans – including The Coachella Valley Tr

Fans of the dynamic, jazz/soul driven vocal interpreter Michael Moody’s unique phrasing, arrangements and tender intimacy have been waiting seven years – which seems much longer, due to the pandemic – for The Ecstasy of Love , his brilliant, emotionally compelling follow-up to his second standards album It Never Entered My Mind . While his first two projects had traditional jazz lineups featuring piano and drums, the key to the even more intense, vulnerably intimate romance a

Since unleashing his pent up musical passion on his brilliant Brazilian samba/Afro-Cuban jazz debut album Latin Jazz Sessions in 2024, there’s been no stopping composer, arranger and producer Ron Reider, a successful physical scientist who made music on the side whenever he had the chance, waiting for the right opportunity to record with the perfect dream teams of jazz musicians to help him realize his unique, stylistically varied visions. One his third album Compositions in

With their masterful first dual ambient-tribal trance album Activation , veteran instrumental artists, visionary sonic imagineers and innovators Byron Metcalf and Billy Denk invite us to experience something deeply personal and visceral yet transcendent and soul-transformative, creating expansive, richly immersive musical landscapes to facilitate foundational, enduring connections to our authentic inner selves, sparking dreams and imagination that help us explore our inner wo

It’s the best-case scenario every artist dreams of – the opportunity to dedicate themselves to a long-term creative project without a strict deadline, navigating melodic, rhythmic and harmonic challenges and emerging, as the Darren Litzie does with a transcendent album like On My Own Time . With a set of stylish, hipster originals and uniquely haunting, atmospheric, expansively arranged re-imaginings of “Moonlight in Vermont” and “Time of the Season,” the brilliant multi-tale

The opening line of Grammy nominated composer/arranger Dave Slonaker’s liner notes for Shifty Paradigms , his melodically and harmonically imaginative, rhythmically intense and stylistically diverse third album, says it all about his lifelong devotion to the realm: “Since my middle school days, the sound of big band has intrigued me." One of Hollywood’s most in demand arrangers and orchestrators for more than 30 years, his diversity is rooted in complementary passions for Jaz

Effervescent, ever-witty and stylish L.A. jazz blues and soul icon Betty Bryant is perhaps the only singer alive of which we can say, at age 96, it feels like she’s just getting warmed up. Quickly following up her critically acclaimed 2024 album Lotta Livin’, she joins forces with longtime collaborator and saxophonist/producer Robert Kyle for Nothin’ Better To Do , a lively, soulfully lived in, stylistically eclectic and beautifully loving set of engaging originals and offb

That elementary school teacher who taught Ricky Alexander the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s “Tiger Rag” and other ragtime classics would fall in love quickly with the innovative, wildly versatile clarinet master’s third Turtle Bay Records recording Ragology. In addition to showcasing Alexander’s effervescent passion for seminal century-plus old romps like “Buffalo Rag,” “Ragtime Oriole,” “Nola” and the Jelly Roll Morton classics “Shreveport Stomp” and “Sweetheart O Mine,”

Fully embracing and embodying the title of his full-length debut Songs of My Dreams , James Judson reveals himself not only as a graceful, deeply soulful balladeer and charming crooner with an impeccable sense of swing, but also as an effortlessly talented vocalist who never gave up on his lifelong dream to sing - and literally gains inspiration from his subconscious dreams. After pursuing music into his 30s, he reached a crossroads to raise his large family (six kids) and bu