Simone Green’s Black Queen Turns Resilience, Healing and Self-Worth Into a Musical Declaration

 

For Simone Green, music has always been more than entertainment. It has been a vehicle for storytelling, healing, cultural expression and connection. With her newly released sophomore album, Black Queen, the Chicago-based vocalist, songwriter and culture activist transforms those elements into a six-track declaration of confidence, resilience and self-worth.

Released independently through Green’s own Soulistic360 RPS label, Black Queen was inspired by what Green describes as the strength, brilliance and resilience of Black women. Rather than centering the pain that often accompanies stories of perseverance, the project deliberately shifts the focus toward power, celebration and the right to embrace every hard-earned victory.

“After everything I’ve experienced in my own life—from surviving breast cancer twice, to building businesses, leading bands, and navigating an industry that often asks women, especially Black women, to make themselves smaller—I wanted to create a body of work that celebrates our power instead of our pain,” Green says. “This album is a love letter to Black women who have earned every crown they wear.”

That personal history gives Black Queen an emotional foundation that extends beyond its six songs. Green's journey has included surviving breast cancer twice, establishing herself as a performer and entrepreneur, leading bands and building a career that has stretched across soul, R&B and contemporary music. The result is an album rooted in lived experience but designed to speak broadly to anyone navigating challenges while refusing to surrender their sense of worth.

The project opens with its title track, “Black Queen,” which emerged earlier this year as the album’s first single. The song quickly became a centerpiece of Green’s current artistic chapter, inspiring a promotional tour that took her to New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and her hometown of Chicago. The accompanying music video and song also received exposure through BET Soul, BETher and BET.com.

Now, Green is preparing to introduce another dimension of the album with “Breathe,” a soulful exploration of complicated relationships and the healing process that can follow. Written by Green and Jeffery Dillard and produced by Dillard, the track captures the emotional space between heartbreak, reflection and finding the strength to move forward.

Another standout, “The Message,” draws from Green’s desire to offer encouragement to people carrying burdens that may not always be visible. The song was born from her reflections on the conversations people have when someone admits that they are struggling, have lost their peace or feel as though they are carrying the weight of the world alone.

Green says the song ultimately became an expression of compassion and faith, built around a message of perseverance and belief. Its central idea is simple: even in difficult seasons, there is reason to hold on, breathe and keep moving.

That spirit of encouragement runs through the album’s broader vision. Alongside “Black Queen,” “Breathe” and “The Message,” the project includes “Ooh Wee,” “Married to My Music” and “Love Is The Reason,” creating a compact body of work that explores identity, relationships, artistry, faith and love.

Production on the album comes from SFR, Jeffery Dillard and Arnell Newman, with Green remaining closely connected to the project’s songwriting and creative direction.

For Green, the music is also about legacy. She wants Black Queen to remind listeners that their stories have value, their voices deserve space and their accomplishments do not require outside permission.

“My hope is that when people hear it, they don’t just listen to the music—they feel seen, empowered, and reminded to wear their crown boldly,” Green says.

That message will continue beyond the recording itself as Green takes Black Queen to the stage. Her upcoming Black Queen Tour will bring the singer to City Winery venues, beginning in her hometown of Chicago with performances January 5 and 6, followed by St. Louis on January 7 and Boston on January 22.

For Green, opening the tour in Chicago carries particular significance. The city has been central to her artistic evolution since she relocated there from Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1997. She went on to co-found the band Soul Sanctuary, perform for sold-out audiences and establish herself as a respected presence in Chicago’s music community.

“I am beyond thrilled to be able to headline my own, City Winery tour in various markets,” Green says. “This has been a longtime coming and a dream come to fruition, and I get to kick it off in my home-town of Chicago.”

She adds that she is looking forward to bringing the “Simone Green experience” to audiences night after night.

Green’s career extends well beyond the live stage. Her work includes a No. 1 independent radio hit, “We Could Be,” as well as vocal and music placements connected to campaigns for brands including Walmart, Toyota and the Illinois Lottery. Her voice has also appeared in projects including CBS Networks’ Dance Revolution and ABC’s Ugly Betty.

Those experiences have helped shape an artist whose work sits comfortably between soul, R&B and contemporary music while maintaining a strong connection to cultural storytelling.

With Black Queen, Green brings those worlds together in a project that is deeply personal without being confined to her own story. It is music about surviving, loving, believing, healing and recognizing the strength that can emerge from everything a person has lived through.

And as Green takes the project from streaming platforms to concert stages, the crown at the center of Black Queen becomes more than a metaphor. It becomes an invitation—to acknowledge the journey, honor the resilience and step into the next chapter without asking permission.

Jason Robinson Channels Yusef Lateef’s Boundless Spirit Into Blue Salience

For Jason Robinson, the legacy of Yusef Lateef is not something to be preserved in amber. It is an invitation to keep exploring.

With Blue Salience: For Yusef Lateef, Robinson pays tribute to the legendary multi-instrumentalist and composer through a wildly original double album that embraces the breadth, curiosity and fearlessness that defined Lateef’s work. Due October 29, 2026, via Circumvention Music, the project features Robinson’s expansive 17-piece Janus Orchestra and marks the largest ensemble yet assembled for one of his projects.

Rather than reinterpret Lateef’s compositions or attempt to recreate his distinctive sound, Robinson approaches his influence as a creative challenge: What happens when an artist takes Lateef’s limitless curiosity as a model and pushes it into new territory?

“Yusef’s work never had a narrow, simple definition,” Robinson explains, “and that comes out in the way that I've tried to write for this project. Compared to my projects of the past, compositionally I wanted to open the spigot all the way and follow where the sounds and the musical ideas led me.”

That philosophy reaches back to Robinson’s formative years. As a teenager primarily playing alto saxophone, he first encountered Lateef through his work as a sideman with Cannonball Adderley, one of Robinson’s early inspirations. Seeing Lateef perform left a lasting impression.

“The way he used sound and space in that context was so poignant and deep with meaning and emotional content,” Robinson recalls. “There was a kind of intrigue and a remarkable imaginative power in his phrasing and sound on all of the different instruments that he played.”

Robinson would go on to explore Lateef’s work as a leader, but another discovery proved equally important: Lateef’s 1981 book Repository of Sales and Melodic Patterns. Combining music theory, etudes and ethnomusicological study of global traditions, the book offered Robinson a roadmap for thinking about music beyond familiar boundaries.

“For me, discovering that book was an eye-opening experience,” he says. “It was kind of a roadmap to studying musical traditions that aren't your own, with an honesty and a directness that I found really compelling.”

That spirit of exploration became increasingly relevant as Robinson developed his own career as a composer, saxophonist, flutist, bandleader and scholar. Now 21 albums into his career, he has established a musical identity rooted in the fertile spaces between improvisation and composition, tradition and experimentation, acoustic sound and electronics.

Blue Salience brings those worlds together on an ambitious scale.

At its center is the 17-piece Janus Orchestra, an ensemble Robinson describes as “autobiographical.” Its musicians represent different chapters of his creative life, bringing together collaborators from his years in New York City, Boston and his current home in western Massachusetts.

“As a composer, I'm definitely an Ellingtonian,” Robinson says. “Meaning that I write for the specific people that are involved in a project, not for some abstract ‘chair’ in the band. The ensemble represents different chapters of my creative life.”

That approach gives the orchestra an unusually personal character. Rather than functioning simply as a large ensemble, it becomes a map of Robinson’s musical relationships and experiences, with each player contributing an individual voice to the larger composition.

The project also has a geographical connection to Lateef. Robinson, originally from California, eventually moved to Massachusetts, where he serves as Joseph E. and Grace W. Valentine Professor in Music at Amherst College. Part of what drew him to the region was its connection to Lateef and other musicians he admired, including Archie Shepp, Reggie Workman, Billy Taylor and Max Roach.

Robinson's first meeting with Lateef came almost casually, at a local post office during his first week in the area. The encounter helped turn a distant artistic influence into a personal connection to the place where Lateef had lived and worked. Another chance meeting—with Shepp in the produce section of Whole Foods—provided another reminder of the extraordinary musical history surrounding Robinson’s new home.

More than a decade after Lateef’s death in 2013, Robinson began considering what that legacy might mean for a contemporary musician. The idea eventually grew into Blue Salience, a project that asks where Lateef’s sound worlds, scholarship and philosophy might lead today.

The resulting music refuses easy categorization. Robinson moves from intricate, multilayered structures to visceral grooves, from pastoral balladry to abrasive abstraction, from meditative passages to expansive swing. The music can be simultaneously cerebral and physical, carefully constructed and open to spontaneous discovery.

Lateef’s words also become part of the sonic landscape, drawn from his published texts and incorporated into the music as a subtle layer of texture and meaning.

For Robinson, the tribute is therefore less about looking backward than opening doors.

“This isn’t meant to be the definitive way of being inspired by Yusef, nor should it be,” he says. “I just want to see his legacy become one in which people imagine a greater breadth and diversity of sounds being possible.”

That idea captures the essence of Blue Salience. Robinson honors Lateef not through imitation, but through imagination. The album takes the qualities that made Lateef such a singular figure—curiosity, scholarship, openness to global traditions and an unwillingness to remain confined by genre—and uses them as fuel for an entirely new musical statement.

The result is a monumental project that places a deeply personal ensemble inside an equally expansive musical vision. Recorded May 12–14, 2025, Blue Salience: For Yusef Lateef offers a tribute that is as adventurous as the artist who inspired it.

Robinson's music has long thrived at the intersections of seemingly opposing worlds. On Blue Salience, those intersections become the destination. The past informs the present, composition meets improvisation, and a legendary influence becomes the catalyst for new possibilities.

Lateef opened the door for Robinson decades ago. With Blue Salience, Robinson keeps walking through it.

Brian Bromberg Turns Pain Into Purpose on Awakening

For Brian Bromberg, music has always been a language of movement, discovery and expression. On Awakening, his 30th album as a leader, it becomes something even more personal: a record of survival, healing and renewed purpose.

The Grammy-nominated bassist will release Awakening on October 9, 2026, through Shanachie Entertainment, bringing together 13 original compositions and an extraordinary circle of collaborators, including Dave Koz, Paul Brown, Euge Groove, Everette Harp, David Benoit, Marion Meadows and Michael Paulo. The album finds Bromberg drawing on four decades of musical experience while opening a window into a profoundly difficult chapter of his life.

“Awakening is deeply personal to me; I think the emotions within the music are universal,” Bromberg says. “No matter who we are, what we look like, or where we come from…we all experience joy and loss, love and pain, hope and change.”

That universality is at the heart of the project. Bromberg describes Awakening as the musical result of emerging from a terribly painful period and rediscovering his sense of energy, confidence and ownership over his life. The music, he says, came to him during a period when his world had been dramatically altered.

Over four days in December 2023, Bromberg experienced a series of events that would reshape his life. His relationship with his then-fiancée ended, forcing him to leave his home in Ojai, California, along with his recording studio and the animals he considered family. At the same time, he was undergoing cataract surgery and making repeated trips to Santa Barbara for treatment and follow-up care.

Then came a devastating accident. While administering prescribed eye drops in an unfamiliar, dimly lit environment, Bromberg lost his balance and fell onto a concrete floor, breaking his back and severely injuring the fingers of his right hand.

For a bassist, the physical consequences could hardly have been more consequential. Emotionally, he was also dealing with separation, uncertainty, loss and the sudden disappearance of the life he had known.

Yet from that upheaval came music.

“I still ask myself: Where did these melodies come from?” Bromberg recalls. “How did so many joyous melodies come out of so much pain?”

The answer, perhaps, is embedded in the character of Awakening itself. The album refuses to remain in one emotional place. It moves between exuberance and melancholy, funk and balladry, contemporary jazz and straight-ahead sensibilities. Its melodies are often immediately accessible, but beneath the grooves is the story of an artist processing change and finding his way forward.

Bromberg compares the experience to the formation of diamonds and crystals, which emerge from intense pressure and heat. For him, the trials of those months became part of a process of transformation.

“There truly has been an awakening,” he says. “This music saved me. I feel like the music came to me, that it was given to me and entrusted to me to honor it.”

That sense of gratitude extends to the musicians surrounding him on the album. Bromberg has long embraced collaboration, and Awakening continues that tradition with a lineup of distinctive voices. Paul Brown co-produced the project with Bromberg, while saxophonists Dave Koz, Euge Groove, Everette Harp, Marion Meadows and Michael Paulo each bring their own personalities to the music. Pianist David Benoit also joins the project.

For Bromberg, the chemistry matters. “I’ve always tried to surround myself with the best of the best,” he says. “It’s incredibly inspiring to me. Every one of them has such a strong and recognizable voice on their instrument, and they bring that unique voice to my music.”

The album also provides a showcase for Bromberg's remarkable command of the bass as a lead instrument. He moves among a Kiesel B2 five-string bass, a Kiesel B2 four-string tenor bass and a hollow-body piccolo bass, using different registers and tunings to expand the instrument's musical vocabulary. On the record's guitar-like melodies and solos, he plays piccolo bass tuned an octave and a fourth above conventional bass tuning.

That versatility has defined much of Bromberg's career. Across roughly 40 years of recording, he has moved comfortably between musical worlds, collaborating with artists ranging from Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie and Andrea Bocelli to Sarah Vaughan, Lalo Schifrin and Kenny Barron. He has appeared on more than 150 recordings and now adds another milestone to an already expansive discography.

Awakening may be his most direct meeting point between technical mastery and emotional transparency.

“I call these songs ‘melodies of life,’” Bromberg says. “Somehow everything I was going through during that period found its way into the music. I want people to feel who I am and what I was going through when this music was written and recorded.”

The journey begins with “Forever Friends,” a buoyant, groove-driven opener written with Jeff Smith, before moving through the summery optimism of “California Summer” and the free-spirited “The Dancer.” The first single, “Apparently Not!,” featuring Everette Harp, brings a gritty funk edge and stop-time blues lines, while “The Dance We Never Had,” featuring Dave Koz, turns inward with a wistful meditation on the wedding dance that never happened.

Elsewhere, “Cherry Blossom” settles into a warm, soulful groove, while the title track brings a festive African influence and allows Bromberg to move between three different basses. “Ojai,” featuring Paul Brown, carries a more reflective atmosphere, with Bromberg's piccolo bass helping create the track's distinctive sound.

The emotional range continues through “Candlelight,” featuring Michael Paulo; “Salutations,” with Marion Meadows; and “What Could Have Been,” a particularly poignant collaboration with David Benoit. On the latter, Bromberg and Benoit explore the ache of looking back while still moving forward.

There is also room for pure musical exuberance. “Just Be Boppin’ Around” delivers a bottom-heavy groove and spirited interplay between Bromberg and Marion Meadows, while the closing track, “So in Love, So Alone,” brings the album home with an R&B-inflected pulse and a final display of Bromberg's agility.

For Shanachie Entertainment Vice President of Jazz A&R Danny Weiss, Bromberg's ability to combine virtuosity with accessibility is central to his appeal. Bromberg, Weiss notes, can operate at the highest levels of jazz while communicating with a broad audience.

That balance is especially evident on Awakening. Bromberg describes it as perhaps his most format-friendly album while emphasizing that musical integrity remains at its core. It is contemporary without abandoning musicianship, melodic without sacrificing improvisation, and deeply personal without becoming inaccessible.

Ultimately, Awakening is less about leaving pain behind than transforming it into something meaningful. Bromberg does not disguise the circumstances that inspired the music. Instead, he allows joy, grief, nostalgia, gratitude and hope to coexist.

His philosophy is simple: “Good enough is never good enough. Always strive to be the best you can be in music and in your life.”

After decades spent exploring what the bass can do, Bromberg has arrived at another discovery: sometimes the most powerful music comes from allowing life itself to become the instrument.

“Awakening is deeply personal to me,” he says, “but I think the emotions within the music are universal.”

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.