Legendary jazz writer Nat Hentoff wrote in a lengthy article about Jeremy Pelt in the Wall Street Journal, "It is the beat of Jeremy Pelt's heart... that underscores the future of jazz." High praise indeed but Pelt lives up to it on every gig and with every new recording. FACE FORWARD, JEREMY is a multi-textured, thought provoking release which incorporates a sparing use of electronica along with unexpected acoustic instruments such as the cello and harp. The result is a wildly imaginative sonic landscape that exists in it's own time and space as defined by the artist and the leader himself.

Heralded for years as one of the rising stars in jazz, Jeremy Pelt has earned accolades for his staggering virtuosity, which has elicited comparisons to trumpet icons like Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard, as well as for his studious, cerebral approach to the music. While he's clearly the man in charge here, Soul is very much a band-focused release, with all five members of the group heard distinctively and insistently throughout.

Jeremy Pelt stands as a strikingly unique musician, his work consistently sleek and polished yet bristling with the spirit of invention flourishing in a lean, modernist language influenced by classic bebop phraseology. He delivers his lines with authority and economy, the pinpoint accuracy of his tone well-suited to the heightened elegance of his delivery. With pianist Simona Premazzi laying down the changes and Ben Allison's bass lines, Jeremy is joined by the twin drums of Billy Drummond and Victor Lewis for a session of originals, standards and music by Wayne Shorter and Clifford Jordan.

Young jazz lion, trumpeter, Russell Gunn reutns with this Blue on the D.L., a great blues-based, classic jazz album containing a fierceness of attack! It's refreshing to find jazz of such aggressive tension and darkenss amid today's "smooth" and "tehcno" trends.

Ex Machina is a collaboration between saxophonist/composer Steve Lehman, whom the New York Times has called "a state-of-the-art musical thinker," and Orchestre National de Jazz (ONJ) that goes far beyond anything attempted before by a jazz big band. Featuring compositions by Lehman and Frederic Maurin, ONJ's artistic director, the work incorporates elements of French spectral harmony into it's compositional framework while also integrating live, interactive electronics developed at IRCAM in which abstract electronic sounds react to soloist improvisations in real-time. The new work is inspired by Lehman's Octet, whose groundbreaking work were the first to utilize spectral harmony's complex sonorities within a jazz context. Their critically-lauded releases Mise en Abime (Pi 2014) and Travail, Transformation and Flow (Pi 2009) were voted the #1 album of the year in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll and the #1 jazz album of the year in The New York Times, respectively.

Hailed by The New York Times as "a state-of-the-art musical thinker with a reputation for sure-footed futurism," and "one of the transforming figures of 21st-century jazz" by The Guardian, saxophonist/composer Steve Lehman has built a career creating innovative new music that packs the visceral wallop of live performance. Acclaimed for his groundbreaking work of melding spectral harmonies with modern jazz, he was voted the "#1 Rising Star Jazz Musician" in the 2015 Downbeat International Critics Poll and his prior album Mise en Abime the #1 Album of the Year in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll. Lehman continues his boundary-breaking work in a different vein with Selebeyone. The powerful new album draws from modern jazz, the rapping of Senegalese artist Gaston Bandimic, the underground hip-hop of HPrizm (aka High Priest of Antipop Consortium) and live electronics to create a dynamic form of urban experimentalism. Shifting rhythms, otherworldly electro-acoustic harmonies, contemporary sound design, and vocal gymnastics abound. And rather than simply co-existing and accommodating one another, the lyrical and the musical elements of Selebeyone are entirely integrated in exciting new ways. Add to that the unique juxtaposition of English and Wolof and one senses the unveiling of an entirely new musical realm.