Trumpeter, composer and educator Rich Willey sets an inviting tone from the very title of Laid Back Vol. 1, but the album is far more than a collection of easygoing grooves. Featuring seven original compositions, inventive arrangements by Wally Minko and the remarkable electronic valve instrument (EVI) artistry of John Swana, the recording balances relaxed accessibility with adventurous improvisation, creating a colorful blend of funk, reggae, samba, soul-jazz and contemporar

One of the enduring pleasures of jazz is hearing a multi-talented artist take a familiar standard and reveal unexpected emotional colors and improvisational possibilities. Veteran vocalist, trumpeter and scat artist extraordinaire mines this kind of sonic magic throughout It Could Happen To You, a high spirited and often exhilarating collection that showcases both her expressive vocal artistry and bold, adventurous trumpet work – with well-placed touches of surreal scat that

There’s a certain electricity that only exists at the Whisky a Go Go—a sense that decades of Sunset Strip mythology are still hanging in the air somewhere between the Marshall stacks, the dim red lights and the ghosts of every band that ever walked onto that stage believing they were destined for something bigger. On this particular night, that energy belonged to Hellings. Not simply Brett Hellings the singer, but Hellings the band—the evolving, hard-charging rock vehicle the

While the worlds of jazz and mathematics rarely occupy the same creative space, Lawrence Udeigwe (known professionally as UDEiGWE) brings them together with remarkable elegance and insight on Four Lemmas: Toward a Proof of Identity in Music and Mathematics, an ambitious eight-part suite that transforms abstract concepts into soulful, groove-rich musical storytelling. Inviting the listener into an immersive world whose expressions mix singing, spoken word and subtle chanting b

After more than 50 years as a singer, songwriter and consummate jazz storyteller, Mark Winkler continues to prove that artistic longevity has less to do with reinvention than with finding fresh, clever and colorful ways to express an unmistakable personality. On Love Comes First, his 23rd album, the veteran vocalist -whom I’ve fondly dubbed “the L.A. jazz scene’s poet laureate” - moves effortlessly between romance, autobiography, social satire and Great American Songbook eleg

There’s something especially satisfying about the final chapter of a musical journey when the artist resists the temptation to go bigger and instead goes deeper. That’s precisely what pianist, historian and ragtime ambassador Terry Waldo accomplishes on Treasury Volume 3, the concluding installment of his remarkable trilogy for Turtle Bay Records. Rather than simply revisiting the most familiar cornerstones of early jazz and ragtime, Waldo and his Gotham City Band shine a lig

The farther we move from the dawn of jazz, the easier it becomes to regard the music of the 1920s as something preserved behind glass rather than the rambunctious popular entertainment it once was. On A Texas-Sized Band, Austin’s spirited 10-piece ensemble The Joymakers restores the sense of adventure, humor and communal excitement that made these songs staples of dance halls, theaters and radio broadcasts across the Southwest. Guided by multi-instrumentalist, arranger and no

Great jazz singers often discover that the surest way to illuminate the enduring brilliance of a classic songwriter is not through radical reinvention, but by clearing away distractions and allowing the songs themselves to shine anew. On I Like the Sunrise, vocalist Hannah Gill does exactly that, crafting an elegant, intimate and deeply personal tribute to Duke Ellington that trades orchestral grandeur for the warmth of a close-knit ensemble and the pleasures of musical conve

Phillip Schroeder’s Radiance Within feels less like a conventional contemporary classical album than a carefully cultivated refuge. Across seven deeply introspective works for violin, piano and occasional percussion textures, Schroeder creates an atmosphere where silence matters as much as sound, where resonance becomes emotional architecture, and where moments of tension drift through otherwise luminous stillness like passing weather drifting across an open landscape. In an

What’s most striking about The Tao of Muhammad Ali is how quietly it unfolds. Originally composed by D. J. Sparr as part of the multi-layered Imagine Audio/iHeart podcast adaptation of Davis Miller’s acclaimed memoir, the music could easily have remained functional underscore—atmospheric connective tissue supporting narration and storytelling. Instead, separated from the spoken word and reconstructed as a standalone release, these thirteen concise instrumental pieces reveal t

Experimental electronic music often embraces abstraction, but Square Zero: Concert for Computer Network dives into it completely, immersing the listener in an uncompromising sonic environment where repetition, distortion, mathematical process and collective digital interaction become the entire artistic language. This singular 63-minute composition by Serbian composer and programmer Andreja Andric and The Networked Ensemble functions less as a conventional musical work than a

For some composers, visual art serves merely as inspiration, but in the musical imagination of Geoffrey Gordon, it becomes architecture — a way of shaping motion, color, emotional tension and sonic space into something almost tactile. Across Fumée, the latest release from Neuma Records, the British-American composer transforms paintings, poetry and philosophical ideas into vividly cinematic orchestral environments that feel less like conventional concert works than all-encomp