Christian McBride’s Ursa Major Finds Freedom in the Next Generation of Jazz

Christian McBride has spent more than three decades proving that the bass can be both an anchor and a launchpad. Across acoustic jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop and pop, the 11-time GRAMMY® winner has continually built bands that refuse to settle into a single definition. Now, with Ursa Major, McBride is embracing that restless spirit through a new generation of musicians — and a band designed to keep every possibility open.

The ensemble’s debut album, Points of Light, arrives October 30 via Mack Avenue Records, produced by multi-instrumentalist and genre-blurring visionary Terrace Martin. Alongside the announcement, the group has released its take on George Duke’s “No Rhyme, No Reason,” featuring Martin’s atmospheric production and vocoder work.

Ursa Major brings together saxophonist Nicole Glover, guitarist Ely Perlman, pianist Mike King and drummer Savannah Harris, four musicians McBride chose for their individuality, flexibility and willingness to move freely between musical languages. The result is a quintet built less around a fixed stylistic identity than around the chemistry that emerges when five musicians are willing to follow an idea wherever it leads.

That openness was the point from the beginning.

McBride has already led a remarkably diverse collection of ensembles. Inside Straight explored vintage acoustic jazz with a modern sensibility; the Christian McBride Big Band brought expansive arrangements and exuberant swing; the Christian McBride Trio focused on the conversational power of a classic rhythm section; and New Jawn pushed toward something more experimental. His large-scale The Movement Revisited meanwhile transformed the history of the Civil Rights movement into a sweeping musical statement.

But there was something McBride still wanted: a band capable of carrying all of those influences into the same room.

“I had been itching to put together a new band, what I like to call a ‘hybrid band,’ for some time,” McBride explains. “I didn't know at first what form that band would take, but I knew that it had to be a young band.”

In 2022, that idea began taking shape as Ursa Major. Harris, Glover, Perlman and King each arrived through a different route, but all four shared the qualities McBride was searching for.

Harris came recommended by several colleagues as a drummer capable of moving comfortably between swing, funk and freedom. Glover emerged through the musicians’ grapevine as one of the most heralded young voices in jazz. Perlman first caught McBride’s attention at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass summer program, where McBride serves as Artistic Director. And when it came time to find a pianist, Harris and Glover independently pointed McBride toward King.

The chemistry was there. So was the sense that the group could become something larger than the sum of its individual players.

The title Points of Light reflects McBride’s view of his young collaborators. “I have four young stars here,” he recalls thinking. Rather than building the album around his own established identity, McBride allows each member of Ursa Major to contribute original material, making the record a collective statement as much as a showcase for its leader.

To shape the album’s sound, McBride turned to Terrace Martin, whose work across jazz, hip-hop, R&B and contemporary music made him a natural fit for the project. Martin has worked with artists ranging from Kendrick Lamar and Snoop Dogg to Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, and his production gives Points of Light an expanded sonic vocabulary without overwhelming the band’s organic chemistry.

Martin first captured Ursa Major’s live feel in the studio. From there, he and GRAMMY-winning producer and multi-instrumentalist Quintin Gulledge added layers of synths, keyboards and vocoder. The production creates additional space around the quintet while preserving the energy that had developed through years of playing together.

That balance is especially apparent on “No Rhyme, No Reason,” the album’s sole cover. The George Duke composition, originally released as a 1992 single, was not part of some predetermined blueprint. Instead, it emerged organically from conversations in the control room — another example of a project whose best ideas seem to arrive when nobody is trying to force them.

The rest of Points of Light consists of original compositions from members of the band, further emphasizing the collective character of the project. McBride’s bass remains at the center, but Ursa Major is clearly not built around a single dominant voice. Glover’s saxophone, Perlman’s guitar, King’s piano and Harris’ drums each contribute to an ensemble sound that can shift from groove-driven passages to open-ended exploration without losing its identity.

For McBride, that freedom is not simply a musical concept. It is the reason the band exists.

“This album is basically an extension of what we've been doing live for the last four years,” he says. “It's been fun to watch a band develop and grow and progress when everything is so wide open. They don't say no to anything, which is a wonderful thing.”

That philosophy now moves from the studio back to the stage with an international tour spanning North America, Asia and Europe.

Christian McBride & Ursa Major begin September 12-13 at SFJAZZ’s Miner Auditorium in San Francisco, followed by three nights at Blue Note Tokyo from September 16-18. The Japanese leg continues September 19 at Takasaki City Theatre, September 21 at the Kanazawa Jazz Street Festival at Akabana Concert Hall, September 22 at the Ishikawa Nanao Art Museum’s Art Hall in Noto, and September 24 at Billboard Live Osaka.

The European portion begins September 28-29 at Gazarte in Athens, followed by September 30 at AKM İstanbul in Turkey. London’s Ronnie Scott’s hosts the group October 1-2, with subsequent appearances October 4 at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, October 5 at the Enjoy Jazz Festival in Heidelberg, October 6 at Moods in Zurich and October 7 at Nancy Jazz Pulsations in France. These dates are reflected on McBride’s official performance calendar.

After the European dates, Ursa Major returns to the United States for the album-release stretch of the tour. The schedule includes October 21 at Berklee Performance Center in Boston, October 22 at Bowker Auditorium at UMass Amherst, October 23-25 at the Modlin Jazz Fest in Richmond, October 26 at UNCG School of Music in Greensboro, October 27 at Duke’s Reynolds Industries Theater in Durham, October 29 at Hodgson Concert Hall at the University of Georgia in Athens, and October 30 at Glazer Hall in Palm Beach, Florida. Current venue listings confirm the Boston, Durham, Athens and Palm Beach performances.

The complete announced tour schedule is:

Christian McBride & Ursa Major — 2026

• Sept. 12-13 — San Francisco, CA — SFJAZZ, Miner Auditorium
• Sept. 16-18 — Tokyo, Japan — Blue Note Tokyo
• Sept. 19 — Takasaki, Japan — Takasaki City Theatre
• Sept. 21 — Kanazawa, Japan — Kanazawa Jazz Street Festival @ Akabana Concert Hall
• Sept. 22 — Noto, Japan — Ishikawa Nanao Art Museum, Art Hall
• Sept. 24 — Osaka, Japan — Billboard Live
• Sept. 28-29 — Athens, Greece — Gazarte
• Sept. 30 — Istanbul, Turkey — AKM İstanbul
• Oct. 1-2 — London, UK — Ronnie Scott’s
• Oct. 4 — Utrecht, Netherlands — TivoliVredenburg
• Oct. 5 — Heidelberg, Germany — Enjoy Jazz Festival
• Oct. 6 — Zurich, Switzerland — Moods
• Oct. 7 — Nancy, France — Nancy Jazz Pulsations
• Oct. 21 — Boston, MA — Berklee Performance Center
• Oct. 22 — Amherst, MA — Bowker Auditorium @ UMass
• Oct. 23-25 — Richmond, VA — Modlin Jazz Fest
• Oct. 26 — Greensboro, NC — UNCG School of Music
• Oct. 27 — Durham, NC — Duke Reynolds Industries Theater
• Oct. 29 — Athens, GA — UGA, Hodgson Concert Hall
• Oct. 30 — Palm Beach, FL — Glazer Hall

The tour schedule in the original announcement listed Greensboro on October 26 and Athens on October 29, while current venue listings additionally identify the October 27 Durham performance.

McBride’s résumé is vast. In addition to his work as a bandleader and composer, he has collaborated with Sting, Billie Eilish, James Brown, Paul McCartney and countless others. He serves as Artistic Director of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s TD James Moody Festival and the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, while also working as Artistic Director of JAZZ HOUSE KiDS and the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions. He hosts NPR’s Jazz Night in America and SiriusXM’s The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian.

His most recent release, Without Further Ado, Vol. 1, earned a GRAMMY® and featured his Big Band alongside guests including Sting and Andy Summers, Samara Joy, Jeffrey Osborne, Dianne Reeves, José James, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Antoinette Henry. McBride also brought the album’s “Back In Love Again” to Jimmy Kimmel Live! with Jeffrey Osborne.

Yet Ursa Major represents something different. Rather than looking back across an already remarkable career, McBride is deliberately surrounding himself with younger musicians and giving them room to shape the future with him.

Points of Light is the document of that experiment — an album built on trust, curiosity and the belief that the most exciting music can emerge when nobody in the room is afraid to say yes.

And with Ursa Major, McBride seems intent on keeping the possibilities wide open.

Joey DeFrancesco’s Final Sessions Reveal the Uncontainable Spirit of a Jazz Organ Giant

Joey DeFrancesco had a way of making extraordinary musicianship feel almost effortless. Night after night, he could walk into a club, sit behind a Hammond organ, and transform what might have been an ordinary gig into something combustible, soulful and completely alive. Live at Keystone Korner, a posthumous release from Mack Avenue Records, captures that gift with startling clarity — just weeks before the legendary organist and multi-instrumentalist died in August 2022 at age 51.

Recorded at Baltimore’s Keystone Korner, the thriving jazz club helmed by impresario Todd Barkan, the previously unreleased album arrives October 16. Its first preview, DeFrancesco’s original “One More Blues (Live),” offers an early glimpse of a musician still pushing, experimenting and searching, even after decades at the center of modern jazz.

The recording is especially poignant because DeFrancesco was never an artist content to remain inside the boundaries of his own reputation. A Philadelphia-rooted prodigy who became the defining jazz organist of his generation, he built a career that stretched across styles and generations, collaborating with artists including Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Van Morrison and David Sanborn. When he died, The New York Times described him as the “reigning king of the jazz organ,” crediting him with helping bring the instrument “back into vogue in jazz circles.”

Live at Keystone Korner makes clear why that legacy was so formidable. DeFrancesco is heard not only on organ, but also on keyboards, trumpet and tenor saxophone — an instrument that had become a late-blooming passion. Rather than treating those additional voices as curiosities, he folds them into a performance that feels expansive and instinctive, revealing yet another side of an artist who seemed perpetually unwilling to stand still.

The trio surrounding him was crucial to that freedom. Lucas Brown, another musician from Philadelphia, serves as an understated but deeply sympathetic foil, moving between organ, guitar and keyboards. His soulful approach gave DeFrancesco the space to change instruments and alter the musical conversation without disrupting the band’s center of gravity.

“He really enjoyed Lucas because he gave him the opportunity to switch up his instruments,” says Gloria DeFrancesco, Joey’s wife and manager and the producer of Live at Keystone Korner. “Lucas gave him the support he needed.”

Drummer Anwar Marshall completes the trio with a supple, propulsive feel that continually encourages DeFrancesco to stretch. His playing supplies the kind of rhythmic elasticity that allows the organist’s ideas to keep multiplying — chorus after chorus, tune after tune.

“Anwar is amazing,” Gloria says. “Joey knew from the get-go that Anwar is just going to fly.”

That sense of flight runs through the album. The eight-track set moves through compositions including “Awake and Blissed,” “Vibrations in Blue,” “Free,” “Lady G,” “In Times of Reflection,” “Inner Being,” “Roll With It” and “One More Blues.” Together, they document a musician operating with the assurance of a veteran and the curiosity of someone still discovering what his instruments could do.

There is something particularly moving about hearing DeFrancesco in this setting. He spent much of his career on the road, playing clubs and festivals with a consistency that could make his brilliance seem almost routine. He was extraordinarily prolific, extraordinarily generous with his time and, by most accounts, extraordinarily dependable. But the very regularity of that output could obscure just how unusual it was.

Another weekend night. Another packed club. Another set from one of jazz’s most celebrated musicians.

Except there was nothing ordinary about what DeFrancesco brought to those rooms.

Live at Keystone Korner preserves that contradiction: the feeling of an everyday working gig elevated into something that could not be repeated. The intimacy of the club setting places the listener close to the band, while the musicians’ responsiveness gives the performances an almost telepathic quality. DeFrancesco’s command is obvious, but so is his joy — the warmth, humor and restless energy that made his playing resonate beyond technique.

In that sense, the album becomes more than an archival document. It is a reminder of the sheer amount of music DeFrancesco gave to the world and, inevitably, of the music that disappeared with him.

“He started so young,” Gloria says, “and he did so much in those years that he had. But there was so much more that he wanted to do. He definitely wasn’t ready to go. But he left us with this wonderful music, and that is absolutely a blessing.”

The finality of those words hangs over Live at Keystone Korner, but the music itself refuses to sound defeated. DeFrancesco is exuberant, inquisitive and fully engaged with the musicians around him. The album captures not a musician looking backward, but one still reaching forward — switching instruments, chasing ideas and finding new ways to make a familiar room feel electric.

That may ultimately be the most fitting testament to Joey DeFrancesco. He made the extraordinary look like a regular night’s work. These final Keystone Korner performances remind us just how extraordinary that work really was.

Fumi Tomita Turns Japanese Folklore Into Eerie, Shape-Shifting Jazz on Yokai!

 

For bassist and composer Fumi Tomita, ghosts, monsters, and supernatural beings are not simply creatures from another world. They are vessels for memory, identity, grief, and transformation.

On Yokai! Songs of the Japanese Supernatural, due October 16 via Origin Records, Tomita brings those ideas into a vivid jazz setting, creating music inspired by the yokai of Japanese folklore — shapeshifting spirits, demons, monsters, tricksters, and other supernatural figures that have populated Japanese culture for centuries.

Leading a quartet with saxophonist and flutist Carl Clements, guitarist Jason Ennis, and drummer Gary Fieldman, Tomita translates these fantastical beings into sound. The resulting music is often dark and mysterious, but never confined to a single mood. It slithers, lurches, shimmers, dances, and occasionally reveals unexpected beauty.

The project began during a period of personal upheaval. Tomita, who was born in New York to a Japanese father and Chinese-American mother, was processing grief and a spiritual crisis following his father's death in 2023. Around that time, his wife gave him a book of Japanese woodblock images depicting supernatural figures.

The images sparked something.

“I was looking to record spiritual music in a way that suited the way I play,” Tomita recalls. “I felt like I had seen some of those demons and monsters on masks and logos in Japan and knew that it was a perfect fit.”

That connection between visual imagery and sound becomes central to Yokai!. Each composition seems to inhabit the personality of its namesake rather than merely illustrating it.

“Daija (Monster Snake),” the album's opening track, winds unpredictably through melodic, rhythmic, and formal ideas, constantly changing shape like its serpentine subject. “Betobeto-san” begins with a slow, slithering melody before becoming increasingly awkward and chaotic. “Raiju (Thunder Beast)” shifts its rhythmic trajectory in sudden bursts, evoking the lightning balls associated with the creature.

The music feels slightly out of alignment with the ordinary world — appropriately strange for an album about beings that exist somewhere between the familiar and the unknown.

But Yokai! is not an exercise in darkness alone.

Some of its most compelling moments emerge when the quartet discovers beauty inside the supernatural. “Kitsune (The Fox)” is among the album's most graceful pieces, with Tomita delivering a long, low-toned bass solo that feels almost like a secret being whispered from another realm.

On “Amabiko (Sea Lad),” Clements switches to flute for an elegant melody that seems to float above Ennis' pastoral guitar textures. The album closes with “Hyakki Yagyo (A Night Parade of 100 Demons),” a playful and hypnotic finale in which Clements' soprano saxophone twists through a curious 7/4 groove.

The result is an album that manages to be unsettling and welcoming at the same time. Tomita and his collaborators create a world that initially feels unfamiliar, then gradually give the listener enough rhythmic and melodic footholds to explore it.

That sense of exploration has been a defining feature of Tomita's career.

Born November 26, 1971, in New York City, Tomita initially found his way into music through rock. But it wasn't conventional rock that captured his attention. He gravitated toward progressive rock of the late 1970s and early '80s, which led naturally toward jazz fusion and eventually toward experimentation with piano, guitar, and bass.

Bass ultimately became his instrument, carrying him into the jazz performance program at McGill University in Montreal. After working as a musician in Montreal and spending a year in Portland, Oregon, he returned to New York in 2000 to pursue a master's degree at Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Jay Anderson and Larry Ridley.

The program connected him to the city's jazz community, and he began working with musicians including Joey Baron, Vincent Herring, Jeremy Pelt, and Art Hirahara. At the same time, Tomita continued his academic work, studying ethnomusicology at Hunter College and jazz and contemporary media at the Eastman School of Music, where he met tenor saxophonist Dave Detweiler.

He eventually joined the University of Massachusetts-Amherst's jazz program as a tenure-track faculty member, adding teaching and scholarship to his work as a performer and composer.

Tomita's recording career began with Untold and Impromptu, both released in 2011 after being recorded earlier in the decade. In 2019, he took a more direct look at his Asian American identity with The Elephant Vanishes: Jazz Interpretations of the Short Stories of Haruki Murakami.

That project established a pattern that continues on Yokai!: using jazz as a way to investigate literature, culture, memory, and heritage without treating those subjects as static academic concepts.

If The Elephant Vanishes explored Tomita's identity through the fiction of Haruki Murakami, Yokai! looks toward another part of his family and cultural inheritance. The supernatural figures become a new vocabulary for considering the Japanese side of his heritage — one that is simultaneously historical, personal, imaginative, and alive.

The album also follows Tomita's Celebration of Bird, which immersed itself in the tradition of American jazz. Yokai! operates as something of a companion piece, turning his attention across the Pacific and toward the stories and imagery that shaped his father's culture.

That movement between traditions is characteristic of Tomita's approach. He does not treat heritage as something that must be preserved untouched. Instead, he places it in conversation with the improvisational language he has spent decades developing.

The supernatural is particularly well suited to that approach because yokai themselves are difficult to pin down. They transform. They inhabit contradictions. They can be frightening, mischievous, beautiful, grotesque, or all of those things at once.

Tomita's music mirrors that instability.

A melody can suddenly fracture. A groove can stumble. A familiar harmonic idea can take an unexpected turn. A beautiful passage can acquire a darker shadow. The compositions behave less like fixed portraits than living characters capable of changing shape.

That quality also makes the album particularly suited to Tomita's planned audiovisual presentations. Beginning shortly after the album's release, he will present the Yokai! material in performances that place the music in a broader visual and cultural context.

The series begins October 17 at Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut, followed by performances at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn on October 18 and at UMass Amherst on October 21. Additional appearances are scheduled at the Springfield Museum, the Van Dyck Music Club in Schenectady, CNY Jazz Central in Syracuse, and the Bop Shop in Rochester. A performance and lecture at Stanford University is planned for February 28, 2027, in conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the university's Center for Buddhist Studies.

Taken together, the album and performances suggest that Tomita is interested in more than simply telling ghost stories through jazz. He is exploring what happens when old images are allowed to become new sounds — and when personal grief creates an opening for cultural memory to return in unexpected forms.

On Yokai!, the supernatural is never entirely separate from the human. The monsters may slither, vanish, transform, and parade through the night, but underneath them are familiar emotions: fear, curiosity, loss, beauty, playfulness, longing, and the desire to understand what cannot quite be explained.

Tomita gives those emotions a musical language that is as fluid as the creatures that inspired it.

The ghosts don't simply haunt these songs.

They move through them.

Zohar & Adam Turn the Attention Economy Into a Sound of Their Own

At a time when attention has become one of the world's most valuable commodities, brothers Zohar and Adam Cabo are asking a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to actually be present?

Their answer arrives through music that refuses to sit still.

The 19- and 21-year-old brothers, performing together as Zohar & Adam, have released two new tracks, “REINTEGRATION SICKNESS” and “LATENCY (ft. Amiri Moreno),” combining virtuosic musicianship with hip-hop, neo-soul, electronica, jazz, and an instinct for improvisation that makes their music feel as immediate as the world they are describing.

The songs explore the difficulty of staying grounded in an environment where algorithms are constantly competing for attention, buying it, redirecting it, and ultimately making distraction feel unavoidable. Alongside the release, the duo has unveiled an immersive music video for “REINTEGRATION SICKNESS” that deliberately turns away from the hyper-polished digital aesthetic. Instead, they return to analog imagery as a way of encouraging both themselves and their audience to slow down and inhabit the present.

The concept is particularly fitting for two musicians whose own creative process is built around being intensely responsive to the moment.

Zohar & Adam have grown up in a world where virtually the entire history of recorded music can be accessed with a few taps. Rather than narrowing their musical identity, that abundance has expanded it. Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock can sit alongside D’Angelo, A Tribe Called Quest, Roy Hargrove, MF DOOM, and Hiatus Kaiyote, with countless other influences entering the conversation.

Their music doesn't attempt to hide those influences behind genre boundaries. Instead, the brothers allow them to collide and reshape one another.

Making their Mack Avenue debut, Zohar and Adam are already attracting attention as performers despite their young ages. Their musical relationship was forged inside a family steeped in music and sharpened through years of brotherly competition. The result is an almost instinctive onstage communication — the kind of telepathy that often takes veteran musicians decades to develop.

For the brothers, it has been there for as long as they can remember.

They began performing together young and were already opening for major artists including Norah Jones, Gregory Porter, and Christian McBride while still teenagers. Their live performances have become laboratories for the same spontaneous chemistry that shapes their recordings.

Rather than writing songs entirely on paper, the brothers often begin with improvisation. Ideas emerge through playing, develop through interaction, and eventually become compositions. That process allows the music to retain the unpredictability of the moment in which it was created.

“We’re kind of like disaster artists onstage,” Zohar says. “Whatever happens, happens – and we always keep moving forward. We’re just trying to play what feels good.”

That philosophy is audible in “REINTEGRATION SICKNESS,” where the tension between digital overload and human presence becomes part of the musical architecture. The track moves through contrasting textures and rhythms rather than settling into a single stylistic lane, reflecting a generation accustomed to processing multiple streams of information simultaneously.

“LATENCY,” featuring Amiri Moreno, approaches the same broader idea from another angle. Its title evokes the delay between action and response — a fitting metaphor for a world in which screens and algorithms increasingly mediate how people experience one another and themselves.

Yet the brothers aren't delivering an anti-technology manifesto. Their music is itself a product of the extraordinarily connected world they inhabit. Their influences cross continents and generations precisely because access is so immediate. The tension lies in what happens when constant connection begins to interfere with actual presence.

The accompanying video for “REINTEGRATION SICKNESS” makes that tension tangible. By returning to analog processes and imagery, Zohar & Adam create a visual counterweight to the digital saturation that inspired the music. The aesthetic isn't simply retro; it functions as a reminder that physical texture, imperfection, and slowness can still have meaning in an increasingly frictionless culture.

That push and pull between technology and humanity is also reflected in the brothers' musical vocabulary. Jazz improvisation provides the freedom to react in real time. Hip-hop brings rhythm, sampling logic, and a connection to contemporary culture. Neo-soul supplies harmonic warmth and groove, while electronica opens the door to sound design and digital experimentation.

The result is music that feels difficult to categorize because categorization isn't really the point.

Their emergence comes as the duo prepares for an important milestone: their Blue Note Jazz Club debut in New York on November 30. The appearance places the brothers on one of jazz's most storied stages while they are still defining what their own version of the music can be.

The Blue Note date arrives amid an international run that takes Zohar & Adam through Europe, with performances scheduled in Paris, London, Heidelberg, Leverkusen, Aalen, Madrid, and New York. The itinerary reflects a rapidly expanding audience for a group whose music can move between intimate improvisation and explosive groove without treating those worlds as opposites.

For Zohar & Adam, the challenge is not simply to keep up with a rapidly changing musical landscape. It is to remain present enough to respond to it honestly.

That may be the deeper meaning behind “REINTEGRATION SICKNESS.” In an era defined by notifications, feeds, recommendation engines, and endless streams of content, reintegration becomes an act of reclaiming attention — bringing the mind, body, and senses back into the same room.

The brothers' music makes that idea less philosophical and more physical. It grooves. It surprises. It changes direction. It leaves space for mistakes and reactions.

And it keeps moving forward.

Zohar & Adam's upcoming dates include October 27 at Duc Des Lombards in Paris, October 29 at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, November 4 at Enjoy Jazz Festival in Heidelberg, November 5 at Leverkusen Jazztage, November 6 at Aalener Jazztage in Aalen, November 10 at Babylon Jazz Club in Madrid, and November 30 at Blue Note in New York.

For two young musicians raised with the world's music always within reach, the most radical move may be to stop scrolling, start listening, and see what happens next.

Phil Haynes Asks “What?” Again With the Adventurous New 2 Horns & What?

For drummer and composer Phil Haynes, a question mark has never simply been punctuation. It is an invitation.

More than three decades after launching the eccentric ensemble 4 Horns & What?, Haynes is returning to the concept in a leaner, more combustible form with 2 Horns & What?, a trio built around horns, drums, improvisation, and the possibilities that emerge when almost everything else is stripped away.

The new project makes its recorded debut October 2, 2026, with two albums arriving simultaneously on Haynes’ Corner Store Jazz imprint. AvAnt MODerN is a freewheeling live recording featuring experimental trumpeter Nathan Wooley, while JAzZ nOW takes a somewhat more straightahead — though still unmistakably Haynes — approach with saxophonist Jonathan Ragonese.

Both albums feature Haynes alongside saxophonist Peyton Pleninger, a younger collaborator with whom the drummer has developed a musical mentorship through experiments at Pleninger’s upstate New York venue and research space, The Tavern. The two recordings present different versions of the same fundamental idea: two horn voices and one drummer, left to discover what happens next.

That question has been at the center of Haynes’ musical personality for decades.

He launched 4 Horns & What? in the late 1980s, introducing himself as the “What?” in the equation. The unconventional ensemble combined multiple horns with Haynes’ highly conversational drumming, creating a sound that could move from New Orleans polyphony to free jazz and modern composition.

The original band lasted five years and produced two studio recordings and a live album that remained unreleased for decades before appearing on The Complete American Recordings in 2024. The concept, however, never really left Haynes.

“At this point in my career,” he explains, “I’m constantly trying to figure out where I’m going next. Getting rid of everything but horns and drums challenged me in a lot of ways and also garnered some attention early in my career. I thought that lots of other bands would have explored that setting in the 25 years since, but that hasn’t really happened. So it seemed like there was endless potential in revisiting the idea.”

The revival also gave Haynes an opportunity to look backward in a way that is unusual for an artist whose instincts generally point toward the future. For the new albums, he revisited compositions from several chapters of his career, including his work with Paul Smoker’s trio, the original 4 Horns & What?, and his venturesome trio No Fast Food.

The decision was inspired partly by the example of musicians Haynes considers heroes.

“So many of my heroes, like Joe Henderson or Miles Davis, performed different versions of the same material over the course of time,” he says. “And boy, when the tunes changed and something new emerged, it was always exciting to me. A great tune is a great tune, and it was fun selecting things from my early records with the new guys in mind and then witnessing how they transformed them.”

On AvAnt MODerN, Wooley and Pleninger take that opportunity to the outer edges. The album thrives on extended techniques, unusual textures, startling vocalizations, and the kind of open-ended interaction that makes the absence of a conventional rhythm section feel less like a limitation than a challenge.

Haynes himself becomes another voice within the ensemble, adding spoken recitations to several pieces and expanding the idea of the “What?” beyond the drums.

The album opens with “Never Doubt I Love,” a fanfare built from Shakespeare texts that Haynes originally arranged for his wedding, where his sister Mary Beth, a coloratura soprano, performed the piece. On the new recording, Haynes delivers the words himself, an intensely personal interpretation that reportedly moved his wife Dee, who was in the audience, to tears.

Dee is also honored on “For Doc, Hawk & Dee,” where Haynes offers an impassioned reading of “Body and Soul,” connecting the performance to Coleman Hawkins and to his late mentor Paul Smoker.

If AvAnt MODerN pushes toward the outer limits, JAzZ nOW explores what happens when the same horns-and-drums framework leans more deeply into Haynes’ jazz roots.

Ragonese is a longtime acquaintance of Haynes and a former protégé of pianist Steve Rudolph, one of Haynes’ partners in the Day Dream Trio. His tenor saxophone interacts with Pleninger in a two-horn conversation that draws on the history of players such as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane while remaining firmly rooted in the present.

The opening track, “Together,” erupts into a fiery dual solo over Haynes’ rolling drums. “Goofus’ Step” places woozy horn lines over a deliberately stumbling rhythmic foundation. “Blue Dop” unfolds with a sly, almost cinematic quality, while “A Lil’ Iowa Get-Down” closes the album with an angular hoedown that prompts Haynes to wonder what the people of Davenport might make of it.

For all their differences, Haynes views the two albums as parts of the same band rather than separate projects.

“This really is one band,” he says, “even though we’re exploring different strains of my material. I really enjoy highlighting the ways that the performers change interpretation. When I explain the idea of horns and drums to people, they inevitably respond, ‘What?!’ And that inevitably opens the door to some serious fun.”

That sense of playfulness is part of what has made Haynes such a distinctive presence across nearly four decades of adventurous music. His discography stretches across nearly 100 releases for American and European labels, with collaborations spanning an unusually broad cross-section of contemporary jazz and improvised music.

He has worked with saxophonists Anthony Braxton, Ellery Eskelin, David Liebman, and Wooley; trumpeters Herb Robertson and Paul Smoker; bassists Mark Dresser, Ken Filiano, and Drew Gress; keyboard artists David Kikoski, Denman Maroney, and Michelle Rosewoman; guitarists Ben Monder, Steve Salerno, and Jim Yanda; vocalists Theo Bleckmann, Nicholas Horner, and Hank Roberts; violinist Mark Feldman; and the composers collective Joint Venture.

His musical outlets have included the Americana string band Free Country, Terra with guitarist Ben Monder and Pleninger, the new 2 Horns & What?, and the romantic piano trio Day Dream with Yamaha artist Steve Rudolph.

Haynes has also chronicled his musical journey in his 2023 memoir, Chasing the Masters: First Takes of a Modern Drumming Artist, a wide-ranging account of a career shaped by curiosity, collaboration, experimentation, and an enduring willingness to follow an idea wherever it leads.

That spirit is embedded in the very structure of 2 Horns & What?. Without bass, guitar, or piano to define the harmonic and rhythmic architecture, the musicians have to construct the music in real time. The horns become melody, texture, counterpoint, and sometimes percussion. The drums become more than timekeeping, functioning instead as an equal conversational voice.

And then there is the question mark.

It remains the perfect symbol for Haynes’ approach. The point isn't necessarily to know what will happen before the music begins. The point is to create enough space for something unexpected to happen once it does.

With AvAnt MODerN and JAzZ nOW, Haynes is revisiting an idea that first took shape more than 35 years ago, but he isn't simply recreating his past. By placing the concept in the hands of Pleninger, Wooley, and Ragonese, he is testing what the horns-and-drums format can become now.

Two horns. One drummer. Two very different records.

And, as Haynes has been asking all along, the most important question may still be the simplest one: What happens next?

2 Horns & What?: AvAnt MODerN (Corner Store Jazz CSJ #0160) was recorded March 28, 2026. 2 Horns & What?: JAzZ nOW (Corner Store Jazz CSJ #0161) was recorded May 8–9, 2026. Both albums are released October 2, 2026.

Mathis Picard’s The Sound Orchestra Reimagines Big-Band Jazz for a Global Dance Floor

For pianist, composer, and producer Mathis Picard, the big band has never been about standing still.

His new project, The Sound Orchestra, takes the scale and tradition of large-ensemble jazz and pushes it outward, drawing equally from Madagascar, Afro-Cuban music, 1970s funk, UK garage, and the improvisational language of jazz. The result is a genre-fluid orchestra built not simply to be heard, but to move people.

Picard has announced The Sound Orchestra, the debut album from his large ensemble of the same name, arriving November 6 via La Reserve Records. The announcement comes with “Portrait of Lizzy,” a deeply personal reimagining of the American standard “Portrait of Jennie” and a celebration of Picard’s wife, Lizzy.

The timing is intentional. “Portrait of Lizzy” arrives on the couple’s third wedding anniversary. The two were married at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club, a venue with a significant connection to Picard’s career and his years at The Juilliard School. It is also a place where Picard has performed with The Sound Orchestra at the club’s legendary dance parties, including a celebration of the music of Earth, Wind & Fire, whose infectious energy has become a central influence on the project.

The new recording turns that personal history into music, transforming a classic melody associated with romance into something intimate and contemporary.

For Picard, however, The Sound Orchestra is about more than expanding the traditional jazz ensemble. It is about creating a physical relationship between musicians and listeners.

“This is not your traditional Big Band record,” Picard explains. “The goal of the band was always for it to make people dance. Whether it be swing music, house, dubstep, waltz, or even a ballad, I wanted to connect with the audience through dance. Dance for me is this wonderful way to express our bodies, and for us to be together in community.”

That idea of community is central to the album. Rather than treating musical traditions as separate territories, Picard allows them to collide and communicate. Rhythms from Madagascar, the homeland of his mother, meet Afro-Cuban grooves and the muscular funk of Earth, Wind & Fire. The harmonic and orchestral possibilities of jazz giants such as Duke Ellington and Fats Waller provide another foundation, while contemporary rhythmic ideas broaden the palette.

The result is music that can move between swing, funk, dance music, waltz, balladry, and improvisation without treating genre boundaries as fixed.

Picard's relationship with the large ensemble stretches back to adolescence. At 13, while studying at Chetham’s School of Music in England, he led a similar group. The American incarnation of The Sound Orchestra began years later as a three-horn ensemble performing Picard’s original compositions, with Giveton Gelin and Ruben Fox among its early members.

Over time, the project grew into a full-scale ensemble with a saxophone section, electric bass, and an expansive percussion section. That evolution mirrors Picard’s own musical development: the more worlds he encountered, the more space he needed to accommodate them.

Born in France to a French father and Malagasy mother, Picard began playing piano at four. His education took him across France, the United States, and the United Kingdom before bringing him to New York, where he graduated from Juilliard. He has since established himself as a distinctive young presence in contemporary jazz, receiving recognition from ASCAP’s Next Generation of Songwriters program and becoming a member of the Montreux Jazz Foundation.

His performance history already spans generations and musical perspectives. Picard has worked with artists including Ron Carter, Lillias White, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Wynton Marsalis, and Christian McBride, while performing internationally at venues and festivals including the Umbria Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, and The Jazz Cruise.

That breadth of experience is reflected in The Sound Orchestra. The album doesn't position jazz tradition and contemporary music as opposing forces. Instead, it treats them as parts of the same conversation.

The nine-track album opens with “FearLess” before moving through the two-part “A Bigger Picture,” with “Truth” and “Hope” as its respective movements. “JitterBug Waltz” leads into “Portrait of Lizzy,” followed by “InnerChild,” “SunRise,” “Ho Azy,” and “RoundPoint.”

Even the titles suggest a project concerned with movement, perspective, memory, and possibility.

There is also a sense of deliberate physicality throughout Picard’s concept. Large ensembles can easily become exercises in orchestration — impressive in scale but distant from the audience. Picard's approach reverses that expectation. The arrangements are expansive, but their purpose is ultimately communal: to create a shared rhythmic experience in which musicians and listeners occupy the same physical world.

That philosophy helps explain the influence of Earth, Wind & Fire on the project. Their music demonstrated that sophisticated arrangements, virtuosic musicianship, theatrical scale, and an irresistible dance groove could coexist. Picard takes that lesson into the contemporary jazz landscape, adding his own multicultural vocabulary and an improviser's instinct for surprise.

The Sound Orchestra also continues Picard’s growing relationship with Jazz at Lincoln Center. On October 9, he will perform a solo set at Lincoln Center’s Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio honoring the musical legacy of San Juan Hill. Other upcoming performances include appearances in Pennsylvania, Vermont, San Francisco, and Palo Alto.

With The Sound Orchestra, Picard is building something larger than a conventional big band. The project reflects the many places, traditions, teachers, collaborators, and communities that have shaped him, while leaving room for those influences to transform each other.

At its core, the album asks a deceptively simple question: What happens when the expansive language of jazz is built around the body's instinct to move?

For Picard, the answer is The Sound Orchestra — a meeting place where Madagascar can speak to Afro-Cuban rhythm, Duke Ellington can coexist with funk, orchestral writing can meet improvisation, and a jazz audience can become a dance floor.

The Sound Orchestra arrives November 6 via La Reserve Records.

The album tracklist is “FearLess,” “A Bigger Picture Pt. I (Truth),” “A Bigger Picture Pt. II (Hope),” “JitterBug Waltz,” “Portrait of Lizzy,” “InnerChild,” “SunRise,” “Ho Azy,” and “RoundPoint.”

Upcoming performances include October 9 at Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio at Lincoln Center in New York; October 10 at Middlebury Town Hall Theatre in Middlebury, Vermont; October 15 at the SFJAZZ Joe Henderson Lounge in San Francisco; and October 16 at Meyhouse Jazz in Palo Alto.

Lisa B Brings the ’60s Into the Present With ’60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse

What happens when a Bay Area artist looks back at the songs of the 1960s not as artifacts of a vanished era, but as unfinished conversations?

For Oakland singer, poet, spoken-word artist, and intuitive reader Lisa B, the answer is ’60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse, a soulful, genre-fluid reimagining of songs that emerged from one of the most musically and culturally restless periods of modern American history. Released digitally August 21, with a physical release scheduled for September 25, the album is Lisa B’s eighth full-length record and a deliberate attempt to bring the spirit of the ’60s into the pressures and contradictions of the 2020s.

Rather than reproducing the past, Lisa B bends it.

That approach is especially vivid on “Windy,” her Latin pop-soul-jazz interpretation of The Association’s 1967 classic. In the original, Windy is an elusive free spirit. Lisa B takes that idea of freedom and expands it into something mythic, connecting the character to Oya, the Yoruba wind goddess and orisha, associated with wind, transformation, movement, and feminine power.

The song begins with a prelude establishing that connection before opening into a bright, rhythmically propulsive arrangement. Sandy Cressman supplies background vocals, while Ben Flint plays keyboards, Aaron Germain bass, Jeff Marrs drums, and Brent Sunderland percussion. Recorded at 2200 Studios in Sausalito with overdubs at Santo Recording in Oakland, the track was engineered by Dale Everingham and produced and arranged by Lisa B.

“‘Windy’ always felt to me like a song about a free spirit, but I wanted to open that freedom into something larger,” Lisa B says. “Bringing in Oya gave the song a mythic charge, a sense of wind as power, change, movement, and feminine force. Then the groove takes over. It becomes joyful, danceable, and alive in the body.”

That transformation is the organizing principle behind The Y-Verse. The album revisits songs that Lisa B associates with a moment when music, social change, experimentation, and personal liberation seemed inseparable. With the exception of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” which was released in 1964, the album’s covers first appeared in 1967, a year Lisa hears as a particularly potent cultural crossroads: freeform radio, psychedelic music, folk-rock idealism, soul-jazz, political activism, and an increasingly blurred boundary between musical genres.

The album includes “Spooky,” “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “Windy,” “Everybody Get Together,” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” alongside the original “’60s Magic Now!,” a vocal rap-and-drum duet with Jeff Marrs.

The record’s most recent single before “Windy” was “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” a collaboration with Bay Area hip-hop veteran Lyrics Born. Originally recorded by Traffic in 1967, the song becomes a meditation on imagining freedom. Lyrics Born steps into the role of Mr. Fantasy through an original rap, while Lisa B’s vocals reinterpret the song’s plea for someone to break through the gloom.

The collaboration also created a Bay Area musical circle, bringing Lyrics Born back to Oakland’s Pajama Studios, where he recorded much of Latyrx’s landmark debut, The Album. There, he reunited with mixing engineer James Gardiner, whose long history in Bay Area recording also intersects with Lisa B’s own musical journey.

The political and social atmosphere of the present day is part of what prompted the project. Lisa B describes the album as an urgent response to the Trump administration and the larger pressures of contemporary life, but The Y-Verse is less interested in nostalgia than in asking what remains useful in the idealism of the ’60s.

“That time of ‘everybody get together,’ ‘let’s love one another,’ and also ‘let’s change the world’ felt right,” she says. “In the context of the ’60s, loving one another was a community activity, and it involved social change.”

That distinction matters. These aren't museum pieces in Lisa B’s hands. They are raw material.

She adds new poetic raps and spoken interjections to five tracks, using them to expose possibilities that might be overlooked in the originals. “Ruby Tuesday” becomes a character study. “Spooky” gives greater agency to the mysterious woman at its center. “Windy” acquires a mythological dimension through Oya.

Even the album’s title began as a playful constraint. Every covered song title contains the letter Y. From there, Lisa B developed the idea into something more expansive. Y asks “why.” Its shape evokes a peace symbol. And “The Y-Verse” suggests a parallel universe just far enough removed from ordinary reality to allow a different perspective.

“It’s a WHY verse,” Lisa B says. “It’s an open-minded and open-hearted approach. We’re singing and playing for you with open minds and open hearts.”

That openness extends to the music itself. Engineered by D-Wiz, also known as Dale Everingham, and James Gardiner, and arranged by Lisa B and Ben Flint, the album moves freely among soul-jazz, funk, Latin music, hip-hop, rock, folk, and spoken word. Everingham brings decades of experience in Bay Area hip-hop, R&B, and alternative music, while Gardiner, founder of Live Oak and Pajama Studios, has contributed to recordings associated with 42 gold and platinum records and two Grammy nominations.

For Lisa B, crossing genres isn't a gimmick. It is part of how she understands music.

Across seven previous albums, she has developed a body of work that treats jazz, soul, funk, hip-hop, electronica, spoken word, and literary songcraft as interconnected forms of expression. Her work as an intuitive reader adds another dimension to that practice. She describes the psychic, poet, singer, and improviser as different kinds of seers and listeners, all concerned with what exists beneath the obvious surface.

That perspective helps explain why familiar songs become something different in her hands. The goal isn't simply to cover them. It is to listen for what they might still have to say.

“What makes people excited about music,” Lisa B says, “is that you’re giving them an alternate reality to participate in and also to heal themselves through.”

That alternate reality is at the heart of ’60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse. The album looks backward while refusing to stay there, drawing connections between the communal idealism of another generation and contemporary questions about freedom, identity, women’s power, social change, connection, and collective responsibility.

It is also distinctly Bay Area in spirit: exploratory, genre-fluid, politically conscious, playful, and willing to let a question remain open long enough for the music to answer it.

On “Windy,” that answer arrives as movement — percussion, groove, voice, breath, and the force of Oya's wind. A song born in 1967 becomes something that can live in 2026.

Lisa B isn't trying to recreate the ’60s. She's asking what might happen if we let some of its questions loose again.

’60s Magic Now!: The Y-Verse is available digitally, with a physical release following September 25. Lisa B will perform October 3, 2026, at The Back Room in Berkeley, California.

The album tracklist is “’60s Magic Now!,” “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “Dear Mr. Fantasy” featuring Lyrics Born, “Ruby Tuesday,” “Spooky,” “Windy,” and “Everybody Get Together.”

Listen to “Windy” here: https://lnk.bio/lisablisabernstein

Lily Finnegan Turns Chicago’s Creative Tradition Into a Language of Her Own on 150 Swirl

If Lily Finnegan’s acclaimed 2025 debut Heat On! was a love letter to Chicago’s tightly knit jazz community, 150 Swirl is a manifesto from an artist who understands that consistency can be its own form of rebellion.

Like its predecessor, the new album arrives via Cuneiform Records and reunites Finnegan with the same formidable cast: legendary Chicago tenor saxophonist Edward Wilkerson Jr., alto saxophonist Fred Jackson Jr. and bassist Nick Macri on upright and electric bass. Together, they create music that swings hard, leaves room for disruption and draws equally from Chicago’s deep jazz history and Finnegan’s wide-ranging experiences in punk, improvisation and experimental music.

At 28, Finnegan has already established herself as an essential player across several overlapping scenes. One of the defining characteristics of her musical life has been a willingness to seek out veteran musicians and learn from them.

She doesn’t take those relationships for granted. A recent conversation with a friend visiting from New York put the uniqueness of Finnegan’s Chicago experience into perspective.

“She said, ‘It’s so cool you have so many elders in your life. That intergenerational aspect is really lacking in New York,’” Finnegan recalls. “That’s part of what makes me so excited about this band.”

That intergenerational connection is embedded in 150 Swirl from its opening moments. Finnegan begins with “Same Old Velvet,” a tribute to the late saxophonist Von Freeman’s legendary Velvet Lounge, the long-running Chicago institution that became a vital home for experimental music. Finnegan was too young to have experienced the club firsthand, but its influence permeates the piece.

Swinging with rough-edged abandon, “Same Old Velvet” combines two fragments into a kinetic, rambunctious composition inspired by Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill.

“It’s very inspired by Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, where elements of their work could paint a vibrant picture with sparse melodic information,” Finnegan says.

Edward Wilkerson Jr.’s liquid alto clarinet winds around Fred Jackson Jr.’s more combative alto saxophone, creating a sound that captures Finnegan’s idea of the Chicago aesthetic: loose without abandoning swing.

“Sometimes people think outside music equals not playing in grid-like time,” she says. “I like to keep swing in there that rubs against the grid, particularly when the music gets more chaotic.”

That balance between structure and surprise runs throughout the album. On “Eighty Too,” Macri’s muscular electric bass drives an extended form that feels like a turbulent trip across Chicago, while Wilkerson and Jackson dart around one another in a spirited saxophone conversation. Finnegan’s drumming provides the engine, simultaneously holding the music together and pushing it toward instability.

“For H-Park” takes a similarly kinetic approach, beginning with a drum solo before accelerating into a groove touched by Afro-Cuban rhythms. The pulse becomes a vehicle for the horns to move into increasingly freer territory.

“I enjoy that it’s rough around the edges,” Finnegan says. “With this group, I like to write intricate, interlocking parts but also leave room for surprise when we variate from what’s written on the page.”

The album’s quieter passages reveal another side of her compositional voice. “Lipstick Criminal Moonlight” moves from a brooding, obsessive theme into teasing, deliberate passages built around open space and minimal drum accents. Its initially tense atmosphere gradually becomes meditative before disappearing into silence.

“Lovebird Nextdoor” extends that calm with a lush, Mingus-inspired ballad. Wilkerson delivers the melody on tenor saxophone with understated grace, while Finnegan shapes the rhythm with finely calibrated dynamics and an implied 12/8 pulse.

On the largely through-composed “Drift, Flip, Spiral-Like,” Finnegan uses a rhythmic cue to organize the band’s movement. The gesture draws on samba, functioning as a drum call that brings the musicians back to the melody.

“I created a rhythmic cue that calls the band back in to the melody,” she explains.

The album closes with “Rubber Rose,” perhaps its most striking example of Finnegan’s ability to create simultaneous conversations. Macri opens on electric bass while Jackson and Wilkerson play clarinets, establishing contrasting musical paths. The drums and bass engage in one dialogue while the horns pursue another. Rather than collapsing into chaos, the competing lines create tension and intrigue, leaving the listener inside the music rather than simply observing it.

Finnegan’s approach to music is rooted in a curiosity that has been evident since childhood. Born in Chicago and raised in nearby Evanston, she started playing drums as a tween. Punk and alternative rock initially captured her attention, but jazz entered the picture in high school, when she began recognizing a connection between improvised music and punk.

“I was drawn to music about liberation and bigger topics, and less concerned about fitting in to a genre box,” she says.

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Finnegan initially studied sociology rather than music. Before long, however, she was spending as much time behind the drum kit as she was in the classroom and ultimately graduated with a double major.

A summer in Boston brought her into contact with Terri Lyne Carrington, who recruited her to Berklee’s master’s program. Finnegan completed the degree during the pandemic through a full scholarship to Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute, a 20-person program led by Danilo Pérez. She also participated in the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, where she worked with mentors including Kris Davis, Linda May Han Oh and Carrington.

“Allison Miller is another major one for me,” Finnegan says, adding to a list of mentors who have encouraged her to remain curious across styles and musical histories.

After returning to Chicago in 2021, Finnegan connected with Ken Vandermark through Davis. Vandermark invited her to join his band Edition Redux, giving her an opportunity to observe his compositional process from close range.

“There are so many different ways to write and organize music,” she says.

That lesson has become central to Finnegan’s own practice. Her Berklee thesis, “Music and Abolition: Creating a World Without Policing - Music’s Role in Imagination, Experimentation, and Collectivity,” extended into a broader interest in the ways power, history and social movements have shaped Chicago’s creative community.

She is now one of the curators of the Option Series, a showcase for contemporary improvisation and composition at Experimental Sound Studio. She is also a festival organizer and member of the artist cooperative Catalytic Sound.

Her own projects range widely. With violinist and vocalist gabby fluke-mogul, her partner in the queer-punk-meets-avant-jazz duo, she released Throw It In The Sink in 2024. Her Lily Finnegan Double Drum Quintet, featuring veteran AACM drummer Vincent Davis, recently released Live at Elastic Arts. She also performs with the GAF Trio alongside saxophonist and guitarist Will Greene and cellist Ishmael Ali.

Her collaborators include James Brandon Lewis, Bill Orcutt, Fay Victor, Patrick Shiroishi, Brandon Seabrook and storyteller and multi-instrumentalist Shanta Nurullah, among many others.

That breadth is not accidental. Finnegan sees each project as an opportunity to access a different part of herself.

“The variety of projects help me connect with the different sides of myself,” she says.

That philosophy may be the key to understanding 150 Swirl. The album is rooted in Chicago, but it refuses to be confined by any single definition of Chicago jazz. It can be angular and swinging, composed and spontaneous, muscular and tender. It draws on the city’s elders while giving Finnegan room to establish her own vocabulary.

The result is a quartet that sounds deeply connected to its surroundings while remaining unmistakably individual. With 150 Swirl, Finnegan isn’t simply carrying forward a tradition. She is testing its boundaries, learning from its history and adding her own voice to the ongoing conversation.

150 Swirl features Edward Wilkerson Jr. on tenor saxophone, alto clarinet and B♭ clarinet; Fred Jackson Jr. on alto saxophone and percussion; Nick Macri on upright and electric bass; and Lily Finnegan on drums. The album is forthcoming from Cuneiform Records.

Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo Continue Their Journey Through the Bolero

 

For Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo, the bolero is more than a musical tradition. It is part of the soundtrack of home, family and memory. On El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 3, the celebrated saxophonist and pianist return to the repertoire they have explored together for years, bringing fresh spontaneity and deeply personal feeling to songs that have traveled across generations and borders.

Due August 28, 2026, on Zenón’s Miel Music label, the album is the third installment in a series that began during the isolation of the pandemic and has since become one of the duo’s most distinctive projects. The album will be released on vinyl, CD and all streaming platforms, with an album release concert scheduled for October 17 at The Jazz Gallery in New York City.

“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 combination of preparation and spontaneity defines the music. Zenón and Perdomo have performed together in the internationally acclaimed Miguel Zenón Quartet for 27 years, developing an intuitive musical language that allows them to follow a melody wherever it leads. Zenón’s unmistakable alto sound and Perdomo’s richly expressive piano touch give these familiar songs new dimensions without losing their emotional core.

The bolero itself is a genre built around intimacy. Emerging in eastern Cuba in the 1880s, the bittersweet love song soon spread throughout Latin America and became a defining part of 20th-century popular culture. Radio and cinema helped carry its melodies across borders, creating a shared repertoire that remains deeply embedded in the musical memory of the Spanish-speaking world.

For Zenón, who grew up in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and Perdomo, a native of Caracas, Venezuela, that repertoire is personal.

“We're exploring music that's very familiar to us,” Zenón says. “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 sense of inherited memory is central to El Arte del Bolero. Rather than approaching the songs as museum pieces, the duo treats them much as jazz musicians have long treated the Great American Songbook: as material to reinterpret, reshape and make their own.

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

The connection between bolero and jazz is particularly natural in their hands. The genre’s sophisticated harmonies and song structures provide an expansive canvas for improvisation, while Zenón and Perdomo bring decades of experience to the process. Their versions retain the songs’ essential character while allowing the musicians to respond instinctively in the moment.

Choosing the repertoire is similarly intuitive. The duo does not need to look far for inspiration. Songs emerge from personal memories and conversations, often sparked by something one musician remembers hearing at home or a favorite recording discovered along the way.

That approach helped shape the original El Arte del Bolero, which was created quickly in response to the need for a livestream concert during the pandemic. Released January 8, 2021, while much of the world remained in isolation, the album introduced listeners to the intimate chemistry of Zenón and Perdomo in a stripped-down setting.

El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 2 followed in 2023 and earned the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. With the arrival of Vol. 3, the project has evolved from a one-time response to an established musical series, giving the two artists another opportunity to explore the repertoire that connects their Caribbean and Latin American backgrounds.

Zenón brings an extraordinary depth of experience to the project. A Puerto Rican alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, producer and educator, he has released 19 albums as a leader over 25 years and has collaborated 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 honors include a GRAMMY Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship and Doris Duke Artist Award.

Perdomo brings an equally broad musical background. The Grammy-winning Venezuelan pianist has released nine recordings as a leader and appeared on more than 250 albums as a sideman. His collaborators include Ravi Coltrane, Jerry Bergonzi, Tom Harrell, Brian Lynch, Ray Barretto, Henry Threadgill, David Sánchez, The Cookers and the Vanguard Orchestra. A founding member of the Miguel Zenón Quartet, he has also collaborated with Zenón on all three volumes of El Arte del Bolero.

Yet the appeal of the series ultimately rests less on credentials than chemistry. With no rhythm section to mediate their interaction, Zenón and Perdomo operate in an unusually exposed space, responding to each other in real time. The result is music that can feel conversational, intimate and spontaneous while remaining grounded in a shared understanding of melody and harmony.

For El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 3, that chemistry continues to illuminate songs that have already lived many musical lives. Zenón and Perdomo are not simply preserving a tradition. They are listening for what these melodies still have to say—and finding new ways to say it together.

El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 3 was released August 28, 2026, via Miel Music. The album release concert takes place October 17 at The Jazz Gallery in New York City.