Caleb Wheeler Curtis and Jason Moran Turn Jazz History Into a Living Conversation on Incantation

Jazz duos can be among the most revealing musical encounters. Strip away the safety net of a larger ensemble and there is nowhere to hide. Every note matters. Every pause matters. The musicians have to listen, react and trust each other in real time.

That spirit runs through Incantation, the compelling new album from multi-instrumentalist Caleb Wheeler Curtis and pianist Jason Moran, arriving October 23, 2026, on Imani Records.

Recorded in December 2025, Incantation is much more than a meeting between two exceptional musicians. It is a conversation across generations—a project that embraces jazz history while refusing to treat that history as something fixed or finished.

Curtis and Moran move effortlessly between original compositions, pieces from their own catalogs, music by friends and collaborators, and the work of musicians who helped shape the tradition. There are also two completely improvised performances, allowing the duo to venture into territory where there is no predetermined destination.

The result is music that feels deeply rooted and completely alive.

Curtis describes the album's title as an inadvertent echo of his acclaimed 2026 sextet album Ritual, but the connection goes deeper than the suggestion of ceremony. For Curtis, playing jazz is inherently an act of remembrance.

"This music is a call to the ancestors," he explains, acknowledging the musicians whose ideas continue to live inside the compositions being played today. The list of those influences is expansive: Thelonious Monk, Eric Dolphy, Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderley, Jaki Byard, Orrin Evans and Jason Moran himself.

The idea is particularly appropriate for an album featuring Moran, a musician whose own career has consistently explored the relationship between jazz history and contemporary creativity.

Moran has been described by Rolling Stone as "the most provocative thinker in current jazz," while Curtis has earned recognition as one of the more adventurous musicians working in jazz today. Together, they create a musical environment where history isn't simply referenced—it is reconsidered.

This isn't their first encounter.

Curtis and Moran previously recorded together on Freebird, the 2018 postmodern tribute to Charlie Parker. At the time, Moran was the established star appearing as a special guest with Curtis and the members of Walking Distance, then an emerging collective.

The album was subsequently recognized by The New York Times as one of the 20 best jazz albums of the year.

Nearly a decade later, the relationship has changed. Curtis has established himself as a formidable voice in his own right, expanding his musical vocabulary and developing an unusually broad instrumental palette.

He has become particularly associated with the stritch, the straight alto saxophone famously championed by Rahsaan Roland Kirk, while also adding trumpet to his arsenal. His work has taken him into collaborations with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis, Gerald Cleaver, Justin Faulkner and others, as well as into Ember, the adventurous trio he co-founded.

That growth is evident throughout Incantation.

The album opens with Curtis's soprano saxophone on "That Which Cannot Be Replaced," a composition originally recorded by the then-unnamed Ember on Curtis's 2019 album New Year. His soprano immediately establishes the intimate scale of the project, with Moran responding not as an accompanist but as an equal participant in the conversation.

Curtis contributes four compositions in all. Alongside "That Which Cannot Be Replaced" are the newly written "Incantation," "Ain't No Storm" from his 2021 album of the same name, and "Flotation Device and the Shivers," originally recorded by Ember on 2023's August in March. "Ain't No Storm" returns at the end as a brief, meditative coda.

Moran brings two compositions from his own catalog.

"Gangsterism on a River" originally appeared on Black Stars, his 2001 collaboration with his Bandwagon trio and legendary saxophonist Sam Rivers. Here, the piece takes on a different character within the stripped-down duo setting.

"Restin'," originally recorded on Moran's 2005 album Same Mother, moves even deeper into a slow, brooding atmosphere, demonstrating just how much can change when a composition is reduced to two voices.

But some of the most revealing moments come when there is no composition at all.

"One Hundred Years" and "Archaeology" are free improvisations, and they demonstrate the remarkable trust between Curtis and Moran. "Archaeology" is especially significant because Curtis plays trumpet, an instrument he only recently began incorporating into his musical vocabulary.

He first explored trumpet with Ember, where the trio's environment allowed him to experiment without fear of failure. A duo with Moran, however, offered a very different challenge.

Curtis describes the experience as sensitive and vulnerable, saying he spent much of the session looking at the trumpet sitting on its stand and wondering when he would finally take the leap.

He did so on "Archaeology," the final piece recorded for the album.

That willingness to take risks is central to what makes Incantation work. The music isn't attempting to demonstrate how much the musicians know. Instead, it demonstrates how willing they are to listen.

The album's selections further reinforce its sense of musical community.

"Miss Nancy," written by saxophonist Arthur Blythe, arrives after a brief reminiscence from Moran about his mentor Jaki Byard. Curtis has long championed Blythe as an important and underappreciated influence.

"Tiramisu for Two" comes from Ember bassist Noah Garabedian and was originally recorded on New Year. "Big Small," meanwhile, was written by Orrin Evans, the founder of Imani Records and one of Curtis's longtime collaborators.

Taken together, the repertoire creates something resembling a musical family tree.

Some branches lead backward to Blythe, Byard, Ellington, Monk and other giants. Others lead toward Curtis's own collaborators and peers. Moran sits somewhere in the middle, simultaneously representing the history of the music and its continuing evolution.

That sense of community is one of the qualities Curtis most admires about Moran's work.

For Curtis, Moran's music consistently connects "community, place, time, and history," creating bridges between musicians and generations. Incantation embraces precisely that philosophy.

It also illustrates why jazz remains such a vital art form. The music's history isn't simply something to be preserved. It is something musicians can enter, question, reinterpret and extend.

Curtis and Moran aren't recreating the past on Incantation. They are carrying it forward.

And perhaps that is the album's most compelling message: the ancestors are still present, but they don't dictate where the music goes next.

That decision belongs to the musicians in the room.

For Curtis and Moran, the conversation is wide open.

Incantation will be released October 23, 2026, via Imani Records. The duo will celebrate the album's release with a performance at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on December 12.

For listeners who believe the best jazz is simultaneously connected to its history and unwilling to be confined by it, Incantation promises to be a particularly rewarding encounter.

James Brandon Lewis Connects Dvořák, Black Music and the Continuing Evolution of Jazz on Calling Antonín

James Brandon Lewis has never been content to simply look backward. Even when he draws inspiration from the giants who came before him, his music has a restless quality—always searching for another possibility, another connection, another note.

That spirit is at the heart of Calling Antonín, the new album from Lewis and his Red Lily ensemble, due October 23 on TAO Forms. The project takes an unexpected journey into the music and legacy of Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, particularly the three years he spent in the United States beginning in 1892.

For Lewis, however, this isn't simply an exploration of classical music. It's an investigation into the roots of American music itself—and the fascinating connections between Dvořák, African-American spirituals, jazz and the generations of musicians who followed.

The timing is particularly significant for Lewis. Fresh from being named Tenor Saxophonist of the Year in the DownBeat Critics Poll, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship for Music Composition and completing a celebrated engagement at New York's Village Vanguard with his quartet, he continues to establish himself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary jazz.

Critics have taken notice. DownBeat has described Lewis as an artist "always looking for the next note," while NPR Music has called him a "righteous new classic of the improvising avant-garde." The Guardian has gone even further, describing his saxophone sound as "one of the fiercest sounds in modern jazz."

Calling Antonín finds that sound exploring a composer whose relationship with America was considerably more complicated—and influential—than his place in classical music history might initially suggest.

Dvořák came to the United States in 1892 to lead the National Conservatory of Music of America, an institution founded by Jeannette Thurber, an ambitious patron who wanted to create a uniquely American musical tradition. Dvořák believed that tradition could be found not by imitating European composers, but by looking to the music already being created in America.

He became particularly interested in African-American spirituals and Native American music. He also formed a friendship with Harry Burleigh, an African-American composer and student at the conservatory who became Dvořák's assistant. Burleigh introduced Dvořák to spirituals, including "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," helping expose the composer to a musical tradition that would profoundly influence his thinking.

Those connections eventually found their way into Dvořák's celebrated New World Symphony.

Lewis became fascinated by this history while researching a project that originally began nearly a decade ago. In 2016, bassist and composer William Parker contacted him about creating music for a Dvořák-themed production by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater. The project had previously been championed by trumpeter Roy Campbell, to whom Calling Antonín is dedicated.

Lewis agreed to become musical director and began digging deeply into Dvořák's life, his American experience and the musical relationships surrounding him.

What he discovered was a remarkable lineage.

Through Dvořák and Burleigh, Lewis began following a musical path that eventually connected to figures such as Duke Ellington. Maurice Peress's book Dvořák to Ellington helped illuminate a broader network of teachers and musicians whose influence stretched across generations, including Will Marion Cook, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin and Eubie Blake.

For Lewis, the story isn't about placing jazz inside a classical framework. It's about recognizing that American music has always been interconnected, constantly borrowing, transforming and reinventing itself.

That idea becomes the foundation for Calling Antonín.

The album's nine compositions are Lewis originals, but many are variations on, or inspired by, pieces Dvořák wrote during his American period. Others reflect Lewis's own personal relationship to the composer and the history surrounding him.

The first preview, "Dilemma of Hearts," offers perhaps the clearest example of how Lewis approaches the material. Inspired by the complicated relationship between Dvořák and his wife's sister, the composition takes the theme from the final movement of Dvořák's New World Symphony and transforms it into something darker and more mournful.

Rather than presenting the familiar melody straightforwardly, Lewis turns it into a dirge, surrounding the theme with layers of simultaneous free improvisation. It's a striking example of how the past can become raw material for something entirely new.

The Red Lily ensemble gives Lewis an unusually rich palette with which to explore these ideas. The group features cornetist Kirk Knuffke, violinist Melanie Dyer, cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Joshua Abrams and drummer Chad Taylor—musicians who, like Lewis, occupy important places in today's adventurous American jazz scene.

This is the third Red Lily album, following 2021's Jesup Wagon, a tribute to inventor George Washington Carver that was named Album of the Year in the 2022 DownBeat Critics Poll, and 2023's For Mahalia, With Love, Lewis's powerful evocation of gospel legend Mahalia Jackson.

Lewis has described Red Lily as "regal, majestic" and as what brilliance might sound like if it could be transformed into sound. On Calling Antonín, that description takes on another dimension as the ensemble moves between written melodies, improvisation, chamber-like textures and explosive rhythmic passages.

The result is part historical investigation, part tribute and part musical conversation across centuries.

And perhaps that is what makes Calling Antonín so compelling. Lewis isn't attempting to recreate Dvořák. He is asking what happens when Dvořák's ideas enter the hands of musicians living and creating in 2026.

The answer is a reminder that jazz remains a living tradition precisely because it refuses to stand still.

The musical journey that began with spirituals, ragtime and early American composition continued through swing, bebop, funk, rock and countless other forms before arriving at today's improvisers. Lewis now adds his own chapter to that continuing story.

Dvořák once looked to America for the musical ingredients that could help define an American sound. More than a century later, James Brandon Lewis is looking back at Dvořák—and then pushing the music forward again.

Calling Antonín will be released October 23 on TAO Forms. The album features "Spirit of the Living God," "Lento," "Dilemma of Hearts," "Calling Antonín," "Going Home," "Ode to P.L.D.," "I Want Jesus to Walk With Me," "Finale - Humoresque" and "O' Rebicku."

Lewis and Red Lily will also take the music on the road, with European performances scheduled in Paris on October 27, Le Mans on October 29, Milan on November 7 and Dresden on November 11.

For an artist who has built his reputation by constantly challenging the boundaries of contemporary jazz, Calling Antonín feels like a natural next step: a journey into the past that ultimately points toward the future.

Frank Sinatra Returns to His Room: Celebrating 60 Years of Sinatra at the Sands

 

When Frank Sinatra walked onto the stage of the Copa Room at The Sands in Las Vegas in January 1966, he looked out at a packed house and delivered one of his most memorable opening lines:

“How did all these people get in my room?”

The joke landed because, in a very real sense, the room belonged to him.

Las Vegas was Sinatra’s kind of town. The city’s glamour, late nights, celebrity culture and anything-goes atmosphere suited the man who had become known as the Chairman of the Board. At 50, Sinatra was entering what he called the “September of his years,” but there was nothing autumnal about his command of a stage.

Backed by Count Basie and His Orchestra and arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones, Sinatra was in his element. The combination was formidable: one of America's greatest singers fronting one of the greatest swing orchestras in jazz, with Jones shaping the arrangements and keeping the entire operation moving with precision and fire.

Those legendary Sands engagements would soon be immortalized on Sinatra at the Sands, Sinatra’s first official live album. Released by Reprise Records in July 1966, the original double LP reached No. 9 on the Billboard 200 and went on to become one of the defining live recordings of Sinatra's career. The album was also certified Gold by the RIAA.

Now, 60 years later, Frank Sinatra Enterprises and Capitol/UMe are returning to that remarkable week in Las Vegas with an anniversary campaign that expands the story considerably.

The January 1966 Sands residency represented a remarkable convergence of talent.

Sinatra and Count Basie had already established a successful musical partnership through Sinatra-Basie in 1962 and It Might as Well Be Swing in 1964. Quincy Jones, meanwhile, had worked with Sinatra on the latter album and was now conducting the Basie orchestra behind him.

The chemistry was unmistakable.

Performing two shows a night — at 8:15 p.m. and midnight — Sinatra could move effortlessly from swagger to tenderness, from comedy to melancholy, from the sophisticated balladry of the Great American Songbook to the sheer exhilaration of a big-band swinger.

The repertoire was built around songs that had become synonymous with Sinatra: “Come Fly with Me,” “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “The September of My Years,” “Street of Dreams,” “One for My Baby,” “Fly Me to the Moon” and “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

There were also the songs that reflected Sinatra's current era. “It Was a Very Good Year,” “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me,” “Luck Be a Lady” and “My Kind of Town” all belonged to the evolving Reprise-era Sinatra.

And then there were the surprises.

“Get Me to the Church on Time,” from My Fair Lady, gave Sinatra an opportunity to unleash his comic timing and showmanship. His extended “Tea Break” monologues offered another side of the performance — the nightclub entertainer who could seemingly talk to an audience as easily as he sang to it.

Basie and his orchestra were equally central to the experience. Their “One O’Clock Jump,” along with instrumental performances such as “Makin’ Whoopee!” and “All of Me,” demonstrated that the band was not simply backing Sinatra. They were part of the show.

When Sinatra at the Sands was released in July 1966, listeners were given a carefully selected portrait of those nights rather than a single complete performance.

The album captured the unique atmosphere of the Copa Room — Sinatra joking with the crowd, the band swinging behind him, and the singer shifting from intimacy to theatrical bravado almost without warning.

The original album became an important document of Sinatra as a live performer. It was not simply a collection of songs. It was a representation of an entertainer controlling a room.

Over the years, Sinatra at the Sands has received several reissues and expanded editions, including a 1998 CD edition and a 2003 DVD-Audio release featuring Elliot Mazer’s surround mix.

But there was still far more music in the vault.

The 60th-anniversary campaign, arriving October 23, 2026, changes that.

The centerpiece is a five-CD collection titled Sinatra at the Sands: 60th Anniversary, presenting five complete performances from the original residency for the first time. The shows come from January 26 through February 1, 1966.

The performances are:

• January 26, 1966 — Second Show
• January 27, 1966 — First Show
• January 28, 1966 — First Show
• January 29, 1966 — First Show
• February 1, 1966 — Second Show

The new collection has been mixed and mastered from the original four-track remote tapes by longtime Sinatra engineer Larry Walsh. It also includes a 48-page booklet with new liner notes, detailed track information, rare photographs and eyewitness recollections.

Two additional performances, “Angel Eyes” and “Where or When,” from the second show on January 28, are included as bonus tracks.

The January 28 second show had previously been issued in full on the 2018 Standing Room Only collection, making the two performances a natural addition here without duplicating an entire concert.

For collectors, the significance is considerable. Rather than hearing only the carefully edited representation that appeared on the original album, listeners can now experience five different shows and hear the subtle changes that occurred from night to night.

Listening across the performances reveals an artist working within a familiar framework while allowing room for spontaneity.

“Come Fly with Me” remains the ideal opening statement. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” provides the swing. “The September of My Years” brings introspection. “One for My Baby” turns the room intimate. “It Was a Very Good Year” becomes a meditation on aging and memory.

Then Sinatra could suddenly change the temperature.

“Luck Be a Lady” brings swagger. “Get Me to the Church on Time” brings comedy. “My Kind of Town” sends the audience home with an anthem tailor-made for the city in which the performance took place.

The variations in the monologues are particularly revealing. “The Tea Break” and “A Few Last Words” are not merely connective tissue. They are part of the Sinatra experience — the personality between the songs, the timing, the jokes and the sense that the audience was witnessing something happening in real time.

That spontaneity is one reason the Sands performances remain so compelling.

The timing of the residency is equally fascinating.

Sinatra was 50 years old, an age at which many performers might have been looking back. Instead, 1966 would become another landmark year.

In July, “Strangers in the Night” would reach No. 1, becoming Sinatra’s first chart-topping single for Reprise. The following year, he would return to the top of the charts with his daughter Nancy on “Somethin’ Stupid.”

In that context, the Sands engagement sits at the center of a remarkable period. Sinatra was simultaneously a veteran entertainer and a contemporary hitmaker. He had survived changing musical fashions and reinvented himself through Reprise, yet he remained completely at home in the traditional nightclub environment.

The Sands was where those worlds came together.

Alongside the five-CD box, Capitol/UMe and Frank Sinatra Enterprises are also issuing a newly remixed 2LP 180-gram Vinylphyle edition of the original Sinatra at the Sands. It features new mixes by Larry Walsh and mastering by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound.

The package recreates the original gatefold presentation, including Stan Cornyn’s Grammy-winning liner notes, while adding new notes from Charles Pignone and previously unpublished photographs from the residency.

Digital editions will also feature Dolby Atmos mixes, giving modern listeners another way to experience the performances.

The 2LP sequence retains the familiar character of the classic album while presenting the material in a new mix.

2LP Vinylphyle Edition — Track Listing

Side A

1. “Come Fly with Me” — 3:45
2. “I’ve Got a Crush on You” — 2:42
3. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — 3:43
4. “The Shadow of Your Smile” — 2:31
5. “Street of Dreams” — 2:16
6. “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” — 4:40

Side B

1. “Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)” — 2:50
2. “One O’Clock Jump” — 0:53
3. “The Tea Break” (Monologue) — 11:48
4. “You Make Me Feel So Young” — 3:21

Side C

1. “All of Me” — 2:56
2. “The September of My Years” — 2:57
3. “Get Me to the Church on Time” — 2:21
4. “It Was a Very Good Year” — 4:01
5. “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me” — 3:18
6. “Makin’ Whoopee!” (Instrumental) — 4:24

Side D

1. “Where or When” — 2:46
2. “Angel Eyes” — 3:26
3. “My Kind of Town” — 3:04
4. “A Few Last Words” (Monologue) — 2:30
5. “My Kind of Town” (Reprise) — 1:00

Sinatra at the Sands: 60th Anniversary — 5CD Track Listing

Disc 1 — January 26, 1966, Second Show

1. “Come Fly with Me” — 3:39
2. “I’ve Got a Crush on You” — 2:56
3. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — 3:33
4. “The September of My Years” — 3:11
5. “Street of Dreams” — 2:20
6. “One for My Baby” — 4:41
7. “Fly Me to the Moon” — 2:37
8. “One O’Clock Jump” (Basie Instrumental) — 0:53
9. “The Tea Break” (Monologue) — 15:37
10. “You Make Me Feel So Young” — 3:02
11. “The Shadow of Your Smile” — 2:43
12. “Luck Be a Lady” — 4:33
13. “It Was a Very Good Year” — 4:03
14. “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me” — 3:08
15. “My Kind of Town” — 3:33
16. “A Few Last Words” (Monologue) — 2:04
17. “My Kind of Town” (Reprise) — 1:28

Disc 2 — January 27, 1966, First Show

1. “Come Fly with Me” — 3:42
2. “I’ve Got a Crush on You” — 3:05
3. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — 3:34
4. “The September of My Years” — 2:52
5. “Street of Dreams” — 2:12
6. “Fly Me to the Moon” — 2:37
7. “One O’Clock Jump” (Basie Instrumental) — 0:57
8. “The Tea Break” (Monologue) — 4:59
9. “You Make Me Feel So Young” — 2:59
10. “The Shadow of Your Smile” — 2:44
11. “Luck Be a Lady” — 4:33
12. “It Was a Very Good Year” — 7:11
13. “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me” — 3:02
14. “My Kind of Town” — 3:38
15. “A Few Last Words” (Monologue) — 6:32
16. “My Kind of Town” (Reprise) — 1:13

Disc 3 — January 28, 1966, First Show

1. “Come Fly with Me” — 3:51
2. “I’ve Got a Crush on You” — 4:24
3. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — 3:42
4. “The September of My Years” — 3:07
5. “Street of Dreams” — 2:21
6. “Fly Me to the Moon” — 2:54
7. “One O’Clock Jump” (Basie Instrumental) — 0:56
8. “The Tea Break” (Monologue) — 11:05
9. “You Make Me Feel So Young” — 3:07
10. “The Shadow of Your Smile” — 2:48
11. “Get Me to the Church on Time” — 2:12
12. “It Was a Very Good Year” — 5:26
13. “My Kind of Town” — 3:37
14. “A Few Last Words” (Monologue) — 5:39
15. “My Kind of Town” (Reprise) — 1:31

Bonus Tracks — January 28, 1966, Second Show

16. “Angel Eyes” — 4:10
17. “Where or When” — 2:39

Disc 4 — January 29, 1966, First Show

1. “Come Fly with Me” — 3:45
2. “I’ve Got a Crush on You” — 3:34
3. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — 3:24
4. “The September of My Years” — 3:06
5. “Street of Dreams” — 2:23
6. “Fly Me to the Moon” — 2:41
7. “One O’Clock Jump” (Basie Instrumental) — 0:56
8. “The Tea Break” (Monologue) — 14:56
9. “You Make Me Feel So Young” — 3:08
10. “The Shadow of Your Smile” — 2:38
11. “Get Me to the Church on Time” — 2:26
12. “It Was a Very Good Year” — 4:04
13. “My Kind of Town” — 3:54
14. “A Few Last Words” (Monologue) — 4:58
15. “My Kind of Town” (Reprise) — 1:13

Disc 5 — February 1, 1966, Second Show

1. “Come Fly with Me” — 3:38
2. “I’ve Got a Crush on You” — 2:55
3. “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — 3:26
4. “The September of My Years” — 2:57
5. “Street of Dreams” — 2:22
6. “One for My Baby” — 4:53
7. “Fly Me to the Moon” — 2:37
8. “One O’Clock Jump” (Basie Instrumental) — 0:51
9. “The Tea Break” (Monologue) — 5:44
10. “You Make Me Feel So Young” — 3:07
11. “The Shadow of Your Smile” — 2:41
12. “Luck Be a Lady” — 4:47
13. “It Was a Very Good Year” — 3:56
14. “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me” — 3:11
15. “My Kind of Town” — 3:25
16. “A Few Last Words” (Monologue) — 6:26
17. “My Kind of Town” (Reprise) — 1:34

Six decades later, that opening joke still tells the story.

Sinatra walked onto the Sands stage and immediately made the room his. Basie and his orchestra supplied the swing, Quincy Jones supplied the architecture, and Sinatra supplied the personality that held everything together.

The original Sinatra at the Sands captured only a portion of what happened during those extraordinary nights. The 60th-anniversary collection now allows listeners to go deeper — to hear five complete performances, to hear Sinatra vary his delivery, stretch his monologues and reshape familiar songs from one night to the next.

It is more than an anniversary reissue.

It is a return visit to one of the most celebrated rooms in Las Vegas history, at a moment when one of America's greatest entertainers was completely, unmistakably, at home.

The Chairman had the room.

And 60 years later, he still does.

Lee Ritenour Brings Six Decades of Musical Adventure to Live At Ronnie Scott’s

Few guitarists have spent as much of their careers refusing to stand still as Lee Ritenour. Across nearly six decades, the Los Angeles-born guitarist has moved effortlessly between jazz, fusion, pop, Brazilian music, funk and rock, building a body of work defined less by a single sound than by an enduring curiosity about where the guitar can go next.

Now, at 74, Ritenour is taking that restless spirit to one of jazz’s most storied rooms with Live At Ronnie Scott’s, a new double album arriving October 23, 2026, on The Player’s Club.

Recorded at London’s legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, the album captures a musician whose career has always been shaped by the energy of live performance. For Ritenour, the choice of venue feels almost inevitable.

“Every type of music has been played at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club since 1959,” he says. “That's exactly what I love to do too. So Live At Ronnie Scott's is a match made in heaven.”

The album’s 12 tracks draw from different corners of Ritenour’s extensive repertoire, moving between Brazilian-influenced material, jazz fusion, sophisticated groove and some of the guitarist’s best-known compositions. It is a program that reflects the musical range he has cultivated throughout his career — and the freedom he has always given himself to move from one style to another.

That freedom has been one of the defining characteristics of Ritenour’s career.

He began playing guitar as a child in Los Angeles and was already working professionally as a studio musician while still in his teens. At 16, he landed his first recording session with The Mamas & the Papas, setting him on a path that would eventually make him one of the busiest and most versatile session guitarists in the world.

By the 1970s, Ritenour was working with an extraordinary cross-section of artists. His session credits would eventually encompass names including Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, B.B. King, Tony Bennett and Quincy Jones, while his jazz work brought him into contact with musicians such as Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and Stanley Turrentine. Estimates have placed his studio appearances at thousands of recordings.

Yet Ritenour was never content to remain simply a first-call session player.

In 1976, he launched his solo career with First Course, beginning a discography that would eventually encompass more than 40 albums. His early records helped establish him as one of the leading guitar voices in the emerging jazz-fusion movement, while releases such as Rit demonstrated his ability to incorporate the melodic sensibility and production values of contemporary pop without sacrificing his jazz vocabulary.

His fascination with Brazilian music became another crucial strand of his musical identity. Ritenour toured with Sergio Mendes in the early 1970s and worked with artists including Flora Purim, Gato Barbieri and Paulinho Da Costa. That Brazilian influence would remain a constant throughout his career, and it is reflected repeatedly in the material featured on Live At Ronnie Scott’s.

His 1978 album The Captain’s Journey and later releases such as Rio further developed his fusion of jazz, Brazilian rhythms and sophisticated contemporary songwriting. His collaboration with pianist and composer Dave Grusin became particularly important, producing the Grammy-winning Harlequin in 1985.

Ritenour’s Grammy history is extensive, with one win and 16 nominations across jazz, pop and classical categories.

The guitarist’s collaborative instincts also led to one of contemporary jazz’s most successful supergroups. In the early 1990s, Ritenour joined pianist Bob James, bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason to form Fourplay. The group’s self-titled 1991 debut became a major commercial success, and Ritenour remained for its first three albums before leaving the group in 1997, with Larry Carlton subsequently taking his place.

His own discography continued to evolve throughout the decades. Wes Bound paid tribute to Wes Montgomery, while Larry & Lee reunited him with fellow guitarist Larry Carlton. 6 String Theory brought together an astonishing collection of guitarists and musicians, including B.B. King, George Benson, Keb’ Mo’ and Pat Martino, while Rhythm Sessions featured guests including Dave Grusin, Stanley Clarke, George Duke and Chick Corea.

In 2020, Ritenour took perhaps his most stripped-down musical turn with Dreamcatcher, his first album devoted entirely to solo guitar. It was another reminder that, despite having spent much of his career in ensembles, his fascination with the instrument itself had never diminished.

His longstanding musical partnership with Grusin has continued into the present day. In 2024, the pair released Brasil, returning to the Brazilian music that had played such an important role in their earlier work and recording with an ensemble of Brazilian musicians in São Paulo. The album extended a creative conversation that had begun decades earlier.

That history makes Live At Ronnie Scott’s feel less like a retrospective than another stop on a journey that has never really had a final destination.

The repertoire tells the story.

“Cravo e Canela” immediately establishes the Brazilian influence that has run through so much of Ritenour’s work. “L.A. By Bike” and “For the Palms” move the set into more contemporary territory before the first disc reaches two of his signature pieces, “Captain Fingers” and “A Little Bumpin’.” “Meu Samba Torto” brings the Brazilian thread back into focus to close the first half.

The second disc continues the stylistic journey with “Lay It Down,” followed by the familiar “Is It You?” — Ritenour’s 1981 collaboration with vocalist Eric Tagg that became a pop hit and enduring smooth-jazz favorite.

“Waltz for Carmen” offers a more lyrical turn before the set returns to Brazilian-inspired material with “Stone Flower.” “Pearl” follows, and the performance closes with “Rio Funk,” one of the guitarist’s enduring groove-oriented compositions.

The sequencing makes sense for an artist whose career has always existed between categories. Ritenour does not approach jazz, fusion, Brazilian music or pop as separate identities. They are simply different parts of the same musical vocabulary.

That may be why his playing has remained so recognizable across such a wide range of settings.

His guitar tone can be lyrical and delicate one moment, rhythmically aggressive the next, but there is always an underlying emphasis on melody and groove. Even at his most technically sophisticated, Ritenour has rarely seemed interested in virtuosity for its own sake.

The music has to move.

That principle is particularly important in a live setting, where the guitarist has to respond to the room, the musicians around him and the audience. Ronnie Scott’s is therefore an especially appropriate location for this recording. Since opening in 1959, the club has become one of London’s defining jazz institutions, welcoming generations of international musicians and developing its own reputation as a place where jazz can stretch beyond conventional boundaries.

For Ritenour, that spirit mirrors the way he has approached his own career.

He has never been particularly interested in choosing between jazz and other forms of music. Instead, he has spent decades demonstrating how porous those boundaries can be. His discography moves naturally from fusion to pop, from Brazilian music to funk, from sophisticated instrumental music to collaborations with major vocalists and composers.

The result is a career that is difficult to summarize with a single label.

Jazz guitarist works. Fusion pioneer works. Session ace works. Brazilian music devotee works. Pop collaborator works. Grammy-winning musician works.

But none of those descriptions tells the whole story.

What connects them is the willingness to follow the music wherever it leads.

Live At Ronnie Scott’s arrives as a two-LP gatefold set and CD on The Player’s Club, offering a live portrait of Ritenour at a stage in his career when he has accumulated almost every accolade available but remains just as interested in the next performance.

The complete tracklist is:

Disc One — Side One

1. Cravo e Canela
2. L.A. By Bike
3. For the Palms

Disc One — Side Two

4. Captain Fingers
5. A Little Bumpin’
6. Meu Samba Torto

Disc Two — Side One

7. Lay It Down
8. Is It You?
9. Waltz for Carmen

Disc Two — Side Two

10. Stone Flower
11. Pearl
12. Rio Funk

Live At Ronnie Scott’s will be released October 23, 2026, on The Player’s Club, in 2LP and CD editions.

After nearly 60 years of recording, touring, collaborating and constantly reinventing himself, Lee Ritenour could easily be forgiven for looking back.

Instead, he continues to look forward.

And on a London stage built around the idea that jazz should remain open to possibility, that restless spirit sounds right at home.

Jamie Safir Steps Into the Spotlight With Momentism

 

For roughly 15 years, Jamie Safir has been one of those musicians whose presence can be felt everywhere without necessarily being the name on the marquee. The Manchester-born, London-based pianist has built a remarkable career as an accompanist, collaborator, songwriter and musical partner to some of the most respected names in jazz and popular music.

Now, with Momentism, Safir is finally putting himself at the center of the story.

Released September 4, 2026, on Chill Tone Records, Momentism is Safir’s debut album as a bandleader and composer. It is the culmination of years spent writing, performing and absorbing music from every direction, distilled into a deeply personal collection of nine original songs.

For Safir, the shift is significant.

“I've been writing, recording and performing properly for 15 years,” he says. “It's been exciting to travel around the world doing that, but I was never the artist; I was never the focus.”

That changed after the success of his one-man show, Piano Talk, which premiered in 2022 at Ronnie Scott’s and the Soho cabaret Crazy Coqs. Directed by award-winning singer and actor Ian Shaw, the show combines original music with stories from Safir’s life and career, creating an unusually intimate portrait of the musician behind the piano.

The production went on to enjoy successful performances around the UK and even crossed the Atlantic aboard the Queen Mary 2. Its mixture of music, humor, vulnerability and storytelling revealed something that had perhaps been hiding in plain sight throughout Safir’s career: he was not simply a highly accomplished accompanist. He had a voice of his own.

Chill Tone Records heard it too.

The label approached Safir about recording for them, setting in motion the project that became Momentism. The album features Safir at the center of a trio with bassist Conor Chaplin and drummer Luke Tomlinson, with renowned British tenor saxophonist Iain Ballamy joining the group on more than half of the tracks.

It is an ensemble perfectly suited to Safir’s musical personality. Chaplin, known for his work with artists including Jacob Collier and Marius Neset, and Tomlinson, whose credits include Callum Au and Labi Siffre, provide a rhythm section capable of precision, flexibility and understated musical conversation. Ballamy adds another distinctive voice, bringing decades of experience to music that is both composed and open-ended.

For Safir, however, Momentism is about more than assembling an impressive group of musicians. The album is deeply autobiographical.

Its material stretches across his life as a composer, from pieces that date back to his college years through music written in the weeks immediately preceding the recording sessions. The result is effectively a musical diary, capturing different versions of Safir while bringing them into conversation with one another.

The timing of the project made that personal quality even more pronounced.

The album emerged during a period of considerable upheaval for Safir. A seven-year relationship had ended, and after a decade living in London, he moved to the seaside. The changes brought uncertainty, excitement and emotional turbulence — all of which found their way into the music.

“It happened at a moment when my life was going through a lot of vicissitudes,” he says. “It was a pretty mad time, and a lot of that emotion is in the album.”

That emotional honesty is reflected in the title.

Momentism refers to the struggle to remain present — something that is fundamental to improvisation but equally relevant to everyday life. Jazz musicians have to make decisions in real time, responding to everything happening around them. But Safir is interested in the more complicated side of that idea, too: the decisions made in the moment that feel right now but may have consequences later.

“The idea of Momentism is about struggling to be present in the moment, which is a necessity in jazz but also in life,” Safir explains. “But it also has to do with making decisions in the moment that feel good now but may be damaging later down the line.”

It is an idea that gives the album a compelling tension. The music is immediate and inviting, but beneath its accessibility are stories about choices, relationships, identity and change.

Safir’s instinct for melody comes naturally from his upbringing.

Growing up in Manchester, he found himself surrounded by a city with an extraordinary musical history. His teenage years brought him into proximity with some of the figures who helped shape British popular music. Johnny Marr of The Smiths drove him to school because Marr’s son was in a band with Safir. Safir also delivered newspapers to Oasis guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs.

His family background added another connection to British musical history. His father grew up in Liverpool, on the same street associated with John Lennon.

Safir’s first concert was Paul McCartney.

But jazz was never far away either. Astonishingly, a jazz club operated on his street in the Manchester suburb where he grew up. Safir began working there as a sound engineer at just 13 years old — an experience that gave him an early education in the realities of live music.

He encountered a succession of major British performers passing through the club, including Georgie Fame, who even allowed the young Safir to use his famous Hammond organ for a support performance.

It is difficult to imagine a more formative musical education.

Manchester gave Safir pop, rock, soul and a deep sense of British musical identity, while his work in jazz clubs exposed him to improvisation and the collaborative nature of performance. Those influences remain audible in his music.

His writing is melodic and accessible, but never simplistic. There is a clear appreciation for the craft of a great song, reflecting his admiration for artists such as James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Rufus Wainwright and Burt Bacharach alongside jazz figures including Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock.

Steely Dan was his favorite band growing up, and remains so.

That mixture of influences helps explain why Momentism refuses to sit comfortably inside a single genre. Safir sees jazz as a form capable of absorbing different musical languages, and his own compositions reflect that openness.

“I think that a popular sensibility will always exist in my music,” he says.

It is an approach that makes sense for a pianist who has spent so much of his career moving between jazz and pop environments.

Safir has performed with Kylie Minogue at the Royal Albert Hall, toured internationally with Will Young and written a Christmas single for the singer, collaborated extensively with Ian Shaw, and worked with artists including Annie Lennox, Laufey, Jessie Ware, Veronica Swift, Jamie Cullum and Judi Jackson.

He is also a familiar presence at Ronnie Scott’s, one of London’s most important jazz institutions, where he has become a regular performer and hosted the club’s first weekly vocal jam session.

That career has given him an unusually broad understanding of what makes music communicate.

His collaborators have ranged from major pop stars to leading jazz improvisers, but the underlying lesson is the same: music has to connect.

That may be why the transition from accompanist to bandleader feels so natural on Momentism. Safir has spent years listening closely to other artists, supporting their ideas and finding the right musical response. Now, he is creating the environment in which other musicians can respond to his.

Iain Ballamy’s presence is particularly meaningful in that regard. Safir and Ballamy previously collaborated with Ian Shaw on What’s New, continuing a musical relationship that has developed over time. Ballamy, a founding member of the groundbreaking 1980s British big band Loose Tubes and a close collaborator of pianist Django Bates, brings his own distinctive perspective to Safir’s compositions.

At the center of it all remains Safir’s piano.

There is a sense throughout the project that he is no longer content simply to occupy the space just outside the spotlight. The experiences that once informed his work behind other singers now become the subject of his own music.

The result is an album that feels both newly arrived and long overdue.

Momentism gathers pieces written at different stages of Safir’s life and places them alongside music born from a period of profound change. It turns years of collaboration, observation and experience into something unmistakably his own.

There are heartbreak and humor, uncertainty and optimism, but also an infectious love of melody. The album does not attempt to disguise the contradictions of life. Instead, it embraces them.

That may ultimately be the most jazz-like thing about Momentism: the willingness to respond to whatever happens next.

After 15 years of helping other artists tell their stories, Jamie Safir has finally stepped forward to tell his own.

And judging by Momentism, he has plenty to say.

Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo Continue Their Love Affair With the Bolero on El Arte del Bolero, Volume 3

Some musical traditions are preserved by repetition. Others survive because artists keep finding new ways to make them feel alive. For alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón and pianist Luis Perdomo, the bolero belongs firmly in the latter category.

The duo returned August 28, 2026, with El Arte del Bolero, Volume 3, the latest installment in a project that began during the isolation of the pandemic and has since developed into one of the most compelling contemporary explorations of the Latin American songbook. Released on Zenón’s Miel Music label, the album will be available on vinyl, CD and all major streaming services.

The new volume continues the approach that made the first two albums so beloved: familiar songs, approached with the freedom, curiosity and spontaneity of jazz.

“There is a concept behind it,” Zenón says, “but the performances are very off-the-cuff and involve very few takes. We just go in and play!”

That philosophy is central to the project’s appeal. Zenón and Perdomo are not attempting to turn these songs into museum pieces, nor are they treating them as exercises in stylistic nostalgia. Instead, they bring decades of shared musical experience to repertoire that has been part of their lives since childhood.

The two musicians have played together in the internationally acclaimed Miguel Zenón Quartet for 27 years. Their musical relationship is built on an extraordinary level of familiarity, allowing them to respond to one another instinctively. Zenón’s distinctive, warm alto sound meets Perdomo’s sensitive and highly expressive piano touch, creating a conversation that can move effortlessly between melody, harmony and improvisation.

That chemistry is particularly well suited to the bolero.

Born in eastern Cuba in the 1880s, the bolero developed as a bittersweet form of love song — music of longing, romance and heartbreak that also became an ideal soundtrack for slow dancing. During the twentieth century, the genre spread throughout Latin America and far beyond, carried by radio, cinema and an expanding popular music industry.

Mexican and other Latin American films of the 1930s and 1940s helped turn bolero singers into stars across the hemisphere while embedding many of the genre’s songs permanently into popular culture.

Few musical forms can claim such a broad Latin American identity. The bolero crossed national and cultural borders while retaining its emotional directness, sophisticated harmonic language and timeless melodies.

Zenón and Perdomo know that world intimately.

Zenón grew up in Santurce, Puerto Rico, while Perdomo was raised in Caracas, Venezuela. Although separated geographically, both were surrounded by the music from an early age, hearing the songs at home through their parents and grandparents.

“We're exploring music that's very familiar to us,” Zenón explains. “For both Luis and myself, it has a personal connection. It's not like I was around when these songs were first written or recorded. It's more like I remember hearing them at home through my parents or grandparents.”

That distinction gives El Arte del Bolero its emotional weight. This is not simply a historical reconstruction of music from another era. It is a personal relationship with music passed down through generations.

The duo approaches the repertoire in much the same way a jazz musician might approach the Great American Songbook.

“We explore it the same way that jazz folks would explore music out of the Great American Songbook,” Zenón says.

The comparison is more than convenient. Many of the composers associated with the bolero tradition were influenced in various ways by jazz, and that connection can be heard in the music’s harmonic movement and song structures. For Zenón and Perdomo, those qualities create an ideal environment for improvisation.

Their versions therefore occupy a space between preservation and reinvention. The melodies remain recognizable, but the performances are allowed to breathe. Harmonic colors shift, rhythmic ideas emerge and the two musicians follow one another wherever the music leads.

Even their method of selecting repertoire is deeply personal.

There is no elaborate research process required to locate material. Much of it is already stored in memory.

Zenón might remember a particular song from listening to it with his parents. Perdomo might recall another tune and a recording by a favorite artist. Those memories become the starting point for the duo’s arrangements.

“It's not like we have to look very far,” Zenón says. “We draw from our own experiences.”

That makes the project feel less like an attempt to define a definitive bolero repertoire and more like two musicians gradually assembling their own personal Latin American Songbook.

The series itself has an equally organic origin.

The first El Arte del Bolero was created quickly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when musicians around the world were looking for ways to perform for audiences while concert halls remained closed. Zenón and Perdomo responded to the need for a livestream performance, creating a duo program that eventually became an album released January 8, 2021.

What began as a response to an extraordinary moment proved to have a life of its own.

El Arte del Bolero, Volume 2 followed in 2023 and went on to win the 2024 Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album. The recognition confirmed what listeners had already discovered in the first volume: there was something unusually powerful about hearing two master musicians strip the arrangements down to their essentials and allow the songs to speak through improvisation.

With Volume 3, the project has officially become a series — and one that shows no indication of exhausting its possibilities.

Zenón arrives at the album as one of the most accomplished and influential saxophonists and composers of his generation. A Grammy Award winner and recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship, he has released 19 albums over 25 years as a bandleader while collaborating with artists and ensembles including Charlie Haden, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, David Sánchez, Danilo Pérez, Bobby Hutcherson, the Mingus Big Band and the SFJAZZ Collective.

His work extends beyond performance. As a composer, he has received commissions from organizations and ensembles including NYO Jazz, Chamber Music America, the Logan Center for the Arts, MIT, Spektral Quartet, Miller Theatre, PRISM Quartet and Kinetic Ensemble. He has also spent years teaching, lecturing and giving master classes around the world and serves as an Associate Professor in the Music & Theater Arts Section at MIT.

Perdomo brings an equally deep résumé to the collaboration. The Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan pianist has released nine recordings as a leader and appeared on more than 250 albums as a sideman. His extensive performing history includes collaborations with Ravi Coltrane, Jerry Bergonzi, Tom Harrell, Brian Lynch, Ray Barretto, Henry Threadgill, David Sánchez, The Cookers, George Garzone and the Vanguard Orchestra, among many others.

A founding member of the Miguel Zenón Quartet, Perdomo has also shared three duo projects with Zenón: the original El Arte del Bolero, which received Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations in 2022; the Grammy-winning El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 2; and now El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 3.

Yet the impressive résumés of both musicians are almost beside the point when the two sit down together.

What matters is the sound of their shared history.

There is a particular intimacy in hearing only saxophone and piano tackle music so deeply associated with voice, romance and memory. Without a rhythm section to provide a predetermined pulse, Zenón and Perdomo have the freedom to shape time themselves. A melody can linger, a harmony can open unexpectedly, and a familiar phrase can become something entirely new.

That combination of technical mastery and emotional familiarity is what makes the El Arte del Bolero series so compelling.

The bolero has survived because its themes are universal. Love, absence, desire, regret and remembrance do not belong to any particular generation. Zenón and Perdomo understand that, but they also understand that these songs carry specific memories for the people who grew up with them.

Their task is not to modernize the music simply for the sake of modernity. It is to listen closely enough to discover what is still alive inside it.

With El Arte del Bolero, Volume 3, they continue that conversation — between past and present, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, composition and improvisation, memory and discovery.

The result is a project that demonstrates how tradition can remain vital without losing its identity. These are songs that have traveled across borders and generations, now being heard through the voices of two musicians who have spent decades developing the language needed to let them breathe.

Chick Corea in Transition: Sometime Ago – Live In Germany 1972 Reveals a Master Still Finding His Way

 

There are archival recordings that fill gaps in an artist’s discography, and then there are recordings that seem to illuminate an entire period of an artist’s development. Sometime Ago – Live In Germany 1972, a previously unheard solo concert by Chick Corea, belongs firmly in the latter category.

Released July 17, 2026, by Moosicus and MIG Music, the album captures Corea at the Sendesaal of Radio Bremen in October 1972, when he was just 31 years old and standing at a fascinating crossroads in his career.

His time with Miles Davis was still relatively recent. Return to Forever was only beginning to take shape. The direction of his music was becoming clearer, but it had not yet hardened into a formula. In that sense, this concert feels less like an archival excavation than a missing link — a document of Corea at the precise moment when several possibilities were still open before him.

The solo setting makes the recording particularly revealing.

Without a rhythm section or ensemble around him, Corea has nowhere to hide. Every decision is exposed: the phrasing, the harmonic movement, the rhythmic ideas and the spaces between them. What emerges is an artist thinking through music in real time.

The repertoire includes “Noon Song,” “Sometime Ago” and “La Fiesta,” but Corea approaches each piece less as finished repertoire than as an invitation to explore. Familiar themes become launching points. Motifs expand, structures shift and transitions appear organically as the performance develops.

Rather than simply restating compositions he already knows, Corea seems to be testing their possibilities.

That quality gives the concert an unusual sense of immediacy. You are not simply hearing the finished product of an established musical language; you are hearing that language being developed.

There is a remarkable balance throughout the performance. Corea can move from concise, almost song-like passages into extended improvisation without losing his sense of direction. Rhythmic ideas remain central even when the music becomes more exploratory, while his melodic instincts keep the performance grounded.

The influences surrounding him are equally apparent without ever overwhelming his identity. Jazz, classical music and Latin musical traditions all have a presence, but none is presented as a stylistic destination. Instead, they interact within Corea’s developing vocabulary.

That distinction is important. Corea was not simply combining influences. He was learning how to make them speak to one another in a language that increasingly sounded like his own.

The venue also plays an important role in the character of the recording.

The Sendesaal’s clear, immediate acoustics bring the piano into sharp focus, while the attentive audience creates an intimate atmosphere around the performance. With only Corea and a grand piano occupying the musical space, even small changes in touch, dynamics and rhythm become significant.

His brief spoken introductions contribute to that sense of intimacy. They do not feel like interruptions or conventional stage announcements. Instead, they become part of the performance itself — small moments through which Corea establishes a connection with the audience and frames what is about to happen.

Listening from the perspective of more than five decades later, it is tempting to hear everything that followed already contained within this concert. But the more interesting thing is how unfinished it sounds in the best possible sense.

Much of what would come to define Corea’s career is already present: the rhythmic precision, melodic curiosity, harmonic sophistication and willingness to move freely between musical worlds. Yet none of it feels completely settled.

That sense of possibility is perhaps the recording’s greatest strength.

Corea would go on to create an extraordinary body of work, both as a leader and collaborator, continually reinventing his approach to composition, improvisation and ensemble playing. But Sometime Ago – Live In Germany 1972 takes us back to a moment before those later chapters had been written.

It is a snapshot of an artist between eras — no longer simply the young pianist who had emerged from the Miles Davis orbit, but not yet the fully established Chick Corea whose subsequent work would leave such a profound mark on jazz.

The result is a rare kind of archival document. There is no sense that Corea is attempting to demonstrate where he has arrived. Instead, he is exploring where he might go next.

That makes Sometime Ago – Live In Germany 1972 valuable for reasons that extend well beyond its historical importance. It allows listeners to hear ideas forming rather than simply being remembered, refined rather than merely reproduced.

In the quiet intensity of a solo piano performance, the recording captures something fundamental about improvisation: the moment when possibility becomes music.

Sometime Ago – Live In Germany 1972 is therefore not simply another addition to Chick Corea’s catalog. It is a rare, unmediated portrait of a major artist in motion — concentrated, curious and still discovering the shape of his own future.