Long before the 2020 release of her hypnotic, visceral jazz-soul re-imagining of Nina Simone’s 1966 song “Blackbird” coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement and led her to redefine her identity as Lady Blackbird, Marley Munroe was such a prodigious talent as an adolescent that she signed with a Nashville based Christian label at 12 and began to work with CCM rap/rock stars DC Talk. Though raised in church, by her mid-teens, no longer wanting to be musically limited or

Closing in on three decades since Michael Peterson first graced us with his self-titled debut album and its indelible #1 country hit – and fourth most popular wedding country song of all time – “From Here To Eternity,” the multi-faceted singer songwriter, backed by gospel legends The Imperials,  brings his passionate vocal flair to an epic, soaring and emphatically inspirational version of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Best known for The Hollies’ classic 1969 version (a

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