New Music Releases: Mavis Staples – We Get By; Mavis Pan – Set For Love; Nicole Banks Long - Fly

Mavis Staples – We Get By

Mavis Staples returns with a brand-new studio album produced and written by Ben Harper. Backed by Mavis’ critically acclaimed live band, We Get By features 10 songs of longing, strength, and spirituality, presented with simplicity, grit and sublime beauty. Highlights include the buoyant, “Anytime,” the cathartic “Change,” the title track, an uplifting duet with Ben Harper, plus “Brothers And Sisters,” “ Heavy On My Mind,” “Sometime,” “Never Needed Anyone,” “Stronger,” “Chance On Me.” “Hard To Leave,” and “One More Change.”

Mavis Pan – Set For Love

Set For Love is the new album from accomplished Asian-American pianist and composer Mavis Pan. Equally proficient in both jazz and classical music, Pan has performed her works across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia and has received numerous accolades including Brooklyn College Conservatory’s Morton Feldman and Miriam Gideon composer awards and was a finalist in the YPMP/CACA piano competition. Set For Love was produced by Grammy Award-winning drummer and producer Ulysses Owens, Jr. and showcases a collective of exceptional musicians that accompany Pan in various settings. The album explores love in many contexts including head-over-heels love, love in trouble, love anticipated, and love remembered, and completes a cycle of jazz styles including ballad, blues, bolero, bossa-nova, samba, swing, tango, and waltz, all on the timeless theme of love.

Nicole Banks Long - Fly

Southern bred multi-talented vocal interpreter and songwriter Nicole Banks Long brings a fascinating background – including musical theater performer and contributor to Rod McGaha’s jazz fusion album THE SERVANT - to her a fresh, sultry emergence in Smooth Jazz with the release of her debut album FLY. Balancing honest emotion to her balance of hushed intimacy and deeply soul dramatic flair, the singer finds her unique voice as an artist while cleverly re-imagining classics and lesser known tunes by the likes of Al Jarreau, Roberta Flack, Shirley Horn, Phoebe Snow, Nancy Wilson and others. A sly and insightful storyteller, Banks Long also shares a powerful sense of social consciousness on her two standout originals. ~ www.smoothjazz.com