When’s the last time the title of a cheerful, uplifting hard driving pop/rock album drove you to Google to figure out its inspiration? That happens with Major Spark’s triumphant, energetic  seriously high spirited second album Walk Among the Poppies , whose title track is based on the unusual Australian expression “cut down the tall poppies,” a reference to a cultural phenomenon where people who are successful, ambitious or stand out are criticized, resented or belittled by e

Anyone previously unfamiliar with the extraordinarily inventive veteran Brazilian genre-busting, composer and multi-keyboardist Miguel Kertsman will know they’re in for a prodigious, mind and consciousness-expanding experience on his magnum opus Paradoxes the minute they see quotes from Rolling Stone in his promo materials. “Overall, this music remains indescribable and defies categorization,” their review reads. Berklee Today once called him “the multi-dimensional composer.

While the covers of all three editions of multi-instrumentalist Larry Douglas’ extraordinary, wildly eclectic EP Music Speaks for Me shows the veteran San Francisco based artist sitting at a grand piano, it’s delightful to realize as the intoxicating hip hop-jazz fusion tunes unfold that while he has some incredible pianists working with him (most notably, Clifford Lamb on the gorgeous piano trumpet ballad “They Call Me Zadie Mae”), Douglas is constantly surprising us with a

When the ensemble of powerhouse musicians known as Collaborations emerged from Horizon Music Studios in West Haven, CT in early 2025 with their debut album Songs from the Heart, Vol. 1 , the major story was the cleverly throwback nickname they gave themselves. With rhythm guitarist Ed Daniels (who wrote their music and developed the themes for the songs), producer Vic Steffans and co-producer/orchestrator Matt Oestreicher (Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga) paving the infectious, emot

Folks searching for the perfect stocking stuffer this holiday season for their fellow Big Band enthusiasts need look no further than the...

Sometime in the 70s, jazz trumpeter Don Ellis famously introduced the incomparably eclectic Jimbo Ross as “the only jazz violist in...