In many ways, it’s all come together for Jamie Ousley on A Sea of Voices, issued January 10 on Tie Records. The Miami-based double bassist had already developed an affinity for performing jazz concerts in churches, a tradition Ousley was introduced to during a stint playing with Ira Sullivan. Then,Read More

Little shards of sunshine peek through on Emily Hurd’s new Long Lost Ghosts, a moving acoustic folk-pop project that asks hard questions and doesn’t settle for easy answers. Recorded on a vintage grand piano at Chicago’s King Size Sound Labs, the album showcases Hurd’s finely wrought way with the languageRead More

Holly Hofmann, as we noted before, thrives on collaborations with pianists, and she’s had some notables ones with Bill Cunliffe. You May Also Like: Ethan Keller wants to release FIVE albums this year…but needs your help! Ethan Keller – Dead Man Dancing (2016)

I’ve written about this before, but Hall and Oates used to be on my list of guilty pleasures. Wait, better make that secret guilty pleasures. Super-secret, that is. There was no way I was going to let on to my friends — all of whom were heavily into stuff likeRead More

An unconventional combination of the sound of early solo Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, and touches of David Bowie with hip-hop and minimalist post-rock sensibilities of today, TV On The Radio doesn’t really sound like rock per se, yet doesn’t sound so esoteric that their music is a turn-off. Instead, theRead More

I don’t know exactly what kept Cynic apart for a decade and a half following 1993’s groundbreaking Focus, but the band returned almost as if little time had passed — still technical, still heavy, and not a little bit weird and jazzy in places … maybe even “beautiful,” some oddRead More

Daniel Bennett is a saxophone, clarinet and flute player in Manhattan, but he’s not like any jazz horn player out of NYC. And the reason for that is because what he plays is just as much not jazz as it is jazz. Blending in heaping helpings of folk and someRead More

Nat Janoff’s guitar sounds pretty good on a leisure listen; it’s downright revelatory on closer listen. His single line runs are so brisk, clean and vibrant, the notes feel like 3-D for the ears. Janoff took an unusual route to get that perfect tone and phrasing: he started on piano,Read More

An uplifting shard of Celtic sunlight amidst the shivery glimmerings of winter, Jennifer Cutting’s rousing Song of Solstice is garland of emerald-island legacy pieces, serenely beautiful carols and majestic folk songs — all performed with age-old instrumentation of accordion, fiddle, whistle and bagpipes. Themes focus not just on the joysRead More

The music that David Byrne has created, especially outside of the realm of the Talking Heads, has always resonated with me. Be it The Catherine Wheel, Music for the Knee Plays, or My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Byrne seems to be able to draw musical influences in fromRead More