What does a comedy album sound like when the comedian isn’t simply performing jokes, but opening the door to the life, philosophy and cultural history behind them? That’s the intriguing premise of Laughing With A Legend: Conversations With Septimius The Great, a 14-track hybrid that finds comedy veteran D.L. Hughley looking back, looking around, taking stock, observing with his trademark raucous wit, obliterating the limits and, naturally, finding plenty to laugh about along

After decades of honing his craft in Houston clubs, leading The Collaboration Band, sharing licks with heroes like George Benson and Norman Brown, and balancing music with a long career as an electrician, Randy Guitar B is finally discovering what happens when he stops measuring himself against the greats and simply lets Randy Burns play. Following his soulful, brass fired debut “Joy and More Joy” and the intimate vocal ballad “It’s You,” the multi-talented artist’s latest si

There is something quietly radical about music that asks us to stop, breathe and release our grip on the outside world—and Surrender, the deeply immersive collaboration between vocalist Hargun Kaur and composer/music director Kirti Varsani, does so with remarkable grace while surrounding its devotional heart with richly impassioned contemporary sonics. Working together since 2014, the Punjabi-born Kaur and Gujarati composer Varsani bring distinct spiritual and musical traditi

For harpist, composer, writer, Episcopal priest and professor April Stace, music has long existed at the intersection of spirituality, contemplation and discovery. On Aphelion, however, that intersection becomes a deeply personal landscape, as fourteen original compositions transform a period of divorce, an empty nest, solitude and a solitary journey through New Mexico into an expansive meditation on loss, uncertainty and the possibility of beginning again. Named for the poin

While a great symphony can transport us across centuries, continents and entire emotional landscapes, Symphonina Stories: New Horizons—an all-star compendium of contemporary composers assembled under the visionary umbrella of the Symphonina Foundation—opens that same expansive journey in an extraordinarily compact way, unfolding eight vividly imagined worlds in roughly ten minutes apiece. That is the fascinating premise behind this ambitious double album, which challenges eac

What if the thing standing between you and the life you want is you? Sometimes the most transformative songs begin in that uncomfortable space between knowing you need to move forward and understanding exactly what’s keeping you still. That’s the driving tension at the heart of and fueling “Find A Way,” the hypnotic new single - from Fawn in the Garden, the empower-pop project of Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, actor and multidisciplinary artist Sarah Rosenkrantz. Rosen

Tom Ciurczak has spent the better part of his musical life chasing the next story, the next character, the next unlikely place a song might take him. On his latest album Antarctica, however, the journey feels radically different. The rock-and-roll spirit is still there—restless, irreverent, occasionally reckless—but now it comes with a deeper awareness of what waits at the other end of the road: consequences, mortality, regret, isolation, failed relationships and the people w

Some homecomings are measured in miles, others in the distance between who we were and who we have become. On Exit 10, Nova Scotian saxophonist, composer and bandleader Ally Fiola turns her return to the Annapolis Valley after a decade in Halifax into a seven-track musical landscape where memory, place and reinvention collide in wonderfully unexpected ways. Rather than simply revisiting the sounds of her youth, Fiola takes familiar landmarks and gives them fresh rhythmic DNA,

At 82, after nearly seven decades on stages around the world, more than 75 albums, collaborations with jazz royalty and the rare distinction of becoming one of Jamaica’s greatest cultural ambassadors, Monty Alexander has earned every accolade attached to the phrase “living legend.” Yet spend even a few minutes talking with the Grammy-nominated pianist and it quickly becomes clear that he has little interest in celebrating milestones. Instead, he tells stories—about sneaking a

There’s is something exhilarating about hearing a jazz trio discover just how far three musicians can stretch the boundaries of a conversation. On Trio Nuevo, Vol. 3, pianist and composer Dave Bass, bassist Tyler Miles and drummer Steve Helfand move with such instinctive chemistry that even the album’s most stylistically disparate pieces seem to belong to the same adventurous universe. Bass has assembled another wonderfully eclectic repertoire, but what makes this third insta

Jazz has always possessed a remarkable ability to absorb the many musical voices that define America, transforming familiar melodies into something newly expressive without erasing their history. That expansive spirit animates Of the People, an ambitious and beautifully realized collection from the Visions Jazz Ensemble, trumpeter Sam Butler and tenor saxophonist Garrett Fasig, featuring vocalist April Varner. Spanning spirituals, folk songs, country classics, patriotic stand

New Orleans jazz was never meant to sit still. Its magic lives in the push and pull between instruments, the sly musical asides, the sudden bursts of collective energy and the sense that the entire band is having a conversation at once. That spirit comes alive on Down in Honky Tonk Town, the debut by the nine-piece Burgamy-Hancock New Originators, where a deep affection for early Crescent City jazz meets the spontaneity of musicians who clearly enjoy listening and responding