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