Two-time GRAMMY-winning vocalist, pianist, and songwriter Nicole Zuraitis has never shied away from emotional honesty, but her forthcoming album The Devil I Knew represents her most ambitious and deeply personal artistic statement to date. Arriving July 17, 2026 on La Reserve Records, the sprawling 20-track project unfolds as a cinematic concept album examining the aftermath of a collapsing relationship through themes of accountability, grief, healing, and ultimately self-discovery.
Written and arranged entirely by Zuraitis, The Devil I Knew blends jazz virtuosity, literary inspiration, orchestral grandeur, and confessional songwriting into a work that feels as much like a contemporary song cycle as it does a jazz album. Structured across five interconnected movements—The Mirror, The Martyr, The Malediction, The Reckoning, and The Requiem—the album chronicles an emotional journey from reflection and denial to acceptance and transformation.
What sets the project apart is its fusion of music and literature. Throughout the album, poetry serves as both connective tissue and emotional guidepost, drawing on the words of some of history’s most celebrated female writers, including Dorothy Parker, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, Sara Teasdale, and Johanna Telander. Their voices help frame Zuraitis’ deeply personal narrative while expanding its themes into something universal.
Recorded at EastSide Sound in New York City and mastered by legendary engineer Bernie Grundman, The Devil I Knew brings together an extraordinary cast of collaborators. The album was produced by Larry Klein and Zuraitis, with executive production by Susan Bloomberg, and features performances from some of the most respected musicians in contemporary jazz and beyond.
Among the featured artists are bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Donny McCaslin, guitarist Gilad Hekselman, keyboard master Larry Goldings, bassist and producer Larry Klein, guitarist Dean Parks, and pianist David Cook. Additional contributions from Jon Cowherd, Idan Morim, Sam Weber, Dan Pugach, Scott Sherrard, and others create a richly textured musical landscape that shifts effortlessly between intimate jazz trio settings, orchestral balladry, and cinematic storytelling.
The album’s sonic scope is further elevated by the involvement of acclaimed arrangers Jerry Hey and Vince Mendoza. Hey’s horn arrangements bring dramatic weight and momentum to key moments, while Mendoza’s lush string orchestrations, performed by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra, provide a sweeping emotional backdrop. Vocal arrangements from Sirintip and Vivienne Aerts add further depth to the album’s layered narrative.
At its core, The Devil I Knew is less concerned with assigning blame than with examining the difficult truths that emerge when love falls apart. Songs such as “Won’t Make It Out Alive,” “Call My Name (I Dare You),” “Two Steps Back (The Overlap),” and the title track navigate emotional complexity with remarkable vulnerability, while later pieces including “The Hardest Part,” “It Never Goes Away,” and “Back to You” reveal a gradual movement toward understanding and acceptance.
The album’s structure mirrors that evolution. Each thematic movement functions almost like a chapter in a novel, allowing listeners to experience the emotional arc in real time. Interwoven spoken-word passages and poetic interludes create a sense of continuity that transforms the collection from a series of songs into a fully realized narrative experience.
The title itself hints at one of the album’s central ideas: the realization that the greatest reckoning is often not with another person, but with ourselves. Throughout the project, Zuraitis explores how people construct stories around heartbreak, how they cling to old wounds, and how genuine healing requires confronting uncomfortable truths.
Musically, the album places Zuraitis at the forefront of what some observers have described as a new Romanticism in jazz—a movement embracing emotional depth, literary influence, melodic richness, and unapologetic vulnerability. In an era often dominated by brevity and surface-level engagement, The Devil I Knew offers something increasingly rare: a large-scale artistic statement that invites listeners to sit with difficult emotions and reflect on their own experiences.
The project concludes with a moving sequence that includes a reinterpretation of the standard “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)” before arriving at the understated finale, “The Epilogue.” Together, they provide a fitting conclusion to a journey that is ultimately less about heartbreak than about reclaiming emotional agency.
With its ambitious scope, literary foundations, world-class ensemble, and fearless emotional candor, The Devil I Knew stands as one of the most compelling projects of Zuraitis’ career. It is a work that bridges jazz, songwriting, poetry, and orchestral composition while remaining grounded in something deeply human: the search for meaning after loss.
The Devil I Knew
Nicole Zuraitis
La Reserve Records
Release Date: July 17, 2026
Written and Arranged by Nicole Zuraitis
Produced by Larry Klein and Nicole Zuraitis
Executive Producer: Susan Bloomberg
Recorded at EastSide Sound, New York City (June 2025)
Mastered by Bernie Grundman
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