By the mid-1960s, European touring had become a routine familiar to many of jazz's most well-known practitioners. Piano/composer Thelonious Monk was already over two decades into his career when he began to visit Europe in earnest. Europeans were excited to experience Monk and his storied personality, often focusing as much on his appearance and idiosyncratic behavior ahead of the music. // The release of Bremen 1965 finds the legend on his second tour to feature stops in Germany with his seasoned quartet featuring his longtime saxophone foil, Charlie Rouse, along with bassist Larry Gales and drummer Ben Riley. Bremen, Germany was the second stop on the quartet's world tour, which would include much of Europe, Australia, and Japan. The recording was made on March 8, 1965, in Radio Bremen's storied Sendesaal / Studio F in front of an anticipative audience. Bremen 1965 is the first official release of the concert, mastered from the original tapes held in the Radio Bremen vaults under the guidance and blessings of Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), Radio Bremen, and T.S. Monk. The release will be available in a handful of formats, including digitally along with double CD and LP record sets. Included with the physical releases is a researched set of liner notes from Sunnyside's Bret Sjerven. The recording catches Monk just after some notable transitions. The pianist left his former label, Riverside Records, for Columbia Records, where his most recent release, It's Monk's Time, was fresh off the presses when the quartet arrived in Europe in 1965. There had also been a change in the rhythm section, as bassist John Ore and drummer Frankie Dunlop had been replaced by Larry Gales and Ben Riley, who would both appear on Monk's next studio recording, Monk. The long performance captures unique takes of Monk classics, like "Criss Cross, " "Well You Needn't, " "Epistrophy, " and "Rhythm-a-ning, " along with standards that Monk continued to find inspiring, including "Sweet and Lovely, " "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You, " and "Don't Blame Me." Long, loose takes on these pieces allow for listeners to experience Monk and company's ability to swing, duel, and sing in their most unparalleled fashion. The music of Thelonious Monk remains eternally and monumentally singular in approach and conception. Monk's interpretations of his tunes and those of others have left lasting impressions on the genre of jazz. Bremen 1965 highlights an incredible performance during one of Monk and his quartet's most fiery and exploratory periods.
Born from personal relationships, Sung's compositions bring the masters vividly to life: "A Little Bird Watchin'" swings with Jimmy Heath's mischievous wit and lasting wisdom; "Positively C.T." crackles with Clark Terry's indomitable spirit, showcasing the top-notch trumpet section in 'Clarkisms' and flugelhorn-trumpet sleight of hand; "Wayne's World" reaches for Wayne Shorter's mighty cathedrals of sound as it dances between playful riffs, soaring melodies, and soulful grooves; while "Mr. Virtuosity" stands as tall as Ron Carter's towering bass legacy. "Pianism," a piano concerto inspired by Sir Roland Hanna's urging Sung to not forget her classical roots, celebrates the keyboard mastery of Barry Harris (keeper of Bud Powell's legacy and the bebop flame), Kenny Barron (a modern master of melody), and Herbie Hancock (transcendence personified), with Hanna presiding over the entire work in an intro and reprise which evokes his noble and generous spirit. Alongside these originals, Sung's arrangements of Terry's "Samba Da Gumz," Shorter's "Diana," Carter's "R.J.," Horace Silver's "Peace," and her own "Convergence" complete an album of stunning range and cohesion. But this deeply personal and momentous album is no jazz history lesson; rather, it is a powerful musical statement standing against the prevailing push towards isolation and division. Sung's richly layered work invites listeners to participate in the living continuum and community of Jazz as they experience the masters speaking through this music dedicated to their humanity and profound artistry. Their masterful mentorship helped Sung persevere through rites of passage to find her authentic self, and Oracles encourages the listener to do the same with joy and freedom. Oracles is created with the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, which awarded Sung a Fellowship in 2021 (additional support comes from the New York State Council on the Arts). The pivotal spark for exploring big band came from another organization known for pioneering new opportunities: Jazz at Lincoln Center. In 2016, it commissioned Sung to write a big band arrangement of McCoy Tyner's "Four By Five" for the Orchestra (she performed it with the ensemble, which was recorded and released on the 2017 Blue Engine live album A Handful of Keys). Now ten years later, that experience of composing for large ensemble has come full circle. It is therefore fitting that the brilliant leader of the JLCO, Wynton Marsalis, wrote the liner notes for Oracles, saying: "Helen Sung is a shining example of the heroic journey to self-realization through the art of Jazz. As a soloist, arranger, composer and bandleader she [Helen] has developed an expansive vocabulary that encompasses the richness, virtuosity, freedom and humanity that defines the best jazz... The little details that define our music are well represented and attended to with care and intelligence. That's why this is a great listen... All you have to do is check it out."
The iconic music of Thelonious Monk has inspired generations of instrumentalists and vocalists. The composer's singular style offers challenges ideal for interpretation. Organist Gregory Lewis has long been a Monk acolyte and specialist who is always in search of a new way to frame Monk's work. On Organ Monk Sings, Lewis joins forces with vocalist, lyricist, producer, and artistic director Raina Welch (professionally known as Ms. Raina) for a dramatic and original program of Monk compositions. Gregory Lewis is recognized as a Monk scholar and is best known for presenting Monk's repertoire on the Hammond organ. Seeking new ways to highlight Monk's music, Lewis began exploring the integration of voice into his long-running Organ Monk project. A longtime fan of vocalists who had tackled Monk's music, including Carmen McRae and Abbey Lincoln, he sought a collaborator who could bring something distinctive and fresh to the tradition. Lewis and Welch connected through New York's vibrant music circuit, and their musical chemistry developed naturally through performance, conversation, and a shared commitment to the Black American musical lineage. A classically trained vocalist, Ms. Raina studied at Long Island University Brooklyn and Temple University, refining her technique under the mentorship of soprano Alba Quezada Bloomgarden and mezzo-soprano Dr. Lorie Gratis, with advanced mentorship from soprano Christine Moore Vassallo and Grammy-nominated vocalist Carla Cook. In her crossover journey, Cook's influence grounded Ms. Raina's phrasing, rhythmic placement, and storytelling in the lineage of vocal innovators such as Carmen McRae, Abbey Lincoln, Leon Thomas, and Eddie Jefferson, preparing her for the interpretive and technical demands of Monk's work. Over time, Ms. Raina's engagement with Monk's repertoire deepened through Lewis's perspective as an organist and her own study of the Monk vocal tradition shaped by McRae, Lincoln, Thomas, and Jon Hendricks. The two artists discovered a shared creative vision to reimagine Monk's body of work through the voice, not as novelty but as narrative. Ms. Raina led the project's artistic direction, curating repertoire, shaping the dramatic arc, and co-producing the sessions alongside Lewis. Drawing from her classical discipline, she conceived Organ Monk Sings as a sonic play, a narrative suite exploring love, loss, and revelation through Monk's compositions. Her original lyrics for "Let's Cool One" extend Monk's vocal lineage through a modern lens, merging his compositional wit with personal narrative and emotional depth. The project unfolds in four acts, mirroring the structure of a stage work with overture, scenes, interludes, and grand finale. The track sequence itself tells a story that moves from romantic infatuation to heartbreak, introspection, and renewal. A performance at Arthur's Tavern in New York's Greenwich Village at the end of 2024 proved pivotal, featuring saxophonist Jerry Weldon and drummer Nasheet Waits. Their sensitivity and attention to detail made for an ideal performance, making them the natural choice for the recording sessions held in June 2025 at Tedesco Studios in Paramus, New Jersey. Organ Monk Sings features Gregory Lewis on Hammond B2, Jerry Weldon on tenor saxophone, Nasheet Waits on drums, and Ms. Raina on vocals. The program spans eighteen Monk compositions and runs approximately sixty-two minutes, moving fluidly between solo organ, duos, trios, and full quartet settings. Ms. Raina selected the repertoire, including several pieces Lewis had never previously recorded. She crafted a cohesive dramatic sequence, incorporating instrumental tracks as overtures and interludes. Heard as a whole, the program unfolds like a tragic love story, beginning with infatuation, moving through turmoil, and ending in quiet reflection.
For a decade, the trio of Ben Allison, Steve Cardenas, and Ted Nash has coalesced into a singular ensemble highlighting impressive group interplay and creative interpretations of the music of their favorite composers. After years of focusing on the music of others, the drummer-less trio found it the right time to take on the compositions of it's members on the new recording, Triological. The relationships between Allison, Cardenas, and Nash have spanned decades. Woodwind master Nash enlisted Allison for the bassist's first professional gig in 1990. Their bond deepened later in the decade as they became members of the Jazz Composers Collective. Guitarist Steve Cardenas was brought into Allison's orbit in 2004, the two discovering a deep connection evidenced on the many projects they have worked on together. The trio came together when Cardenas and Allison were approached with a gig in Upstate New York. For the performance, they decided to focus on the music of guitar legend Jim Hall. After a first rehearsal, Cardenas and Allison decided to add a horn to the mix in homage to the revolutionary trio of Jimmy Giuffre, which had featured Hall and bassist Ralph Pena. Their choice of Nash as the woodwind voice was inspired and the trio has been impressing listeners ever since. The configuration of the trio may owe much to the model of that Giuffre group. They reference, but do not intend to duplicate, that trio's example, as the instrumentation has allowed for an openness to explore any musical direction, from free to folk, all in the most conversational of manners. Naturally, the group's first recording, Quiet Revolution (Newvelle and Sonic Camera Records, 2016/2018), featured their arrangements of Hall and Giuffre. Their next recording, Somewhere Else: West Side Story Songs (Plastic Sax Records, 2019) presented the trio's takes on the music of Leonard Bernstein's beloved musical. Their 2022 Sunnyside recording, Healing Power, celebrated the genius of Carla Bley and their 2024 release, Tell The Birds I Said Hello, shined light on the brilliance of Herbie Nichols. When faced with choosing another composer to feature, the trio reached a creative dead end. They felt that it was time to do something conceptually different and that provided a reflection of where they were as an ensemble. Each being a celebrated composer in his own right, the trio decided it was time for a new challenge: To write for this themselves. The trio members knew that a program of original music from each member would provide a fantastic mix of music, as they all write so differently from one another. The trio brought three pieces each (plus one more for Allison) to record at Matt Balitsaris's Maggie's Farm Studio over two days in late June 2025. The trio of Ben Allison, Steve Cardenas, and Ted Nash has spent ten years honing an individual group sound by funneling the influences, their years of experience, and their love of discovery. It is through that prism that their new recording, Triological, highlights a new side of the trio's personality, as they explore their own compositions.
It is often the case that the creation successful art comes down to basic factors. For jazz music, talent and creativity are obvious essentials. But what usually drives music further is trust between performers and a sense of spontaneity in performance. Keyboard master Gary Versace aimed to harness all these elements on his new recording, Three Track Mind, a vibrant collection of fresh arrangements of standards and favorites by a fledging trio, featuring bassist Francois Moutin and drummer Rudy Royston. Versace has long been admired for his incredible touch on piano, organ, and accordion, appearing alongside a tremendous and eclectic of collaborators. His playing has adorned the work of artists as diverse as John Scofield, Maria Schneider, John Hollenbeck, and Madeleine Peyroux. Versace is also an accomplished composer and educator. In his catholic approach to musical collaboration, Versace has been fortunate to perform with some incredible musicians, including Francois Moutin and Rudy Royston. Though, opportunities came often to appear on stage with both, the trio had never played all together. Versace first met Royston in performance with the dearly departed trumpeter Ron Miles in Colorado. Once Royston relocated to New York City, the two began performing more and more, including Versace as accordionist in Royston's Flatbed Buggy. Versace and Moutin regularly found themselves on the bandstand, especially behind vocalists. Versace knew that the two would be ideal in trio, as their musicality and energy were ideal for his style of playing. It was with this in mind that Versace invited Moutin and Royston to a two-day session at Chris Sulit's Trading 8s Studio in July of 2024. Versace wanted to create an environment that replicated the feeling of a live set, just interpreting standards and tunes in an open way to provide fresh takes and opportunity for improvisation, delivering a true sense of the music being able to go anywhere. The pieces the trio played were not planned. Versace would introduce the piece and Moutin and Royston would join in as they recognized it. As fantastic individual orchestrators, Moutin and Royston were able to help Versace make incredible, instantaneous arrangements. With all the takes being so different, Versace provided two takes of Joseph Kosma's standard, "Autumn Leaves," to show just how vastly different the trio could play them. Finding just the perfect balance of elements, Gary Versace brings to fore an openminded and expressive trio with Francois Moutin and Rudy Royston. Together they present, Three Track Mind, an intimate and explorative recording of a trio that should not be missed.
Greetings from Florida: Postcards from Paradise is a new genre-blending song cycle from composer Scott Lee featuring jazz vocalist-guitarist Camila Meza. The album explores the tension between an imagined Florida and the reality experienced by those who are drawn to the state: retirees, tourists, immigrants, and nature lovers. Eight poems by Cuban American poet Carolina Hospital serve as lyrics, each reflecting a different side of Florida, from tourism and retirement to climate crisis and ecological loss. Written for Camila Meza and chamber ensemble, the music blends contemporary classical elements with jazz idioms and pop song structures. Meza's jazz/pop vocals and driving guitar glide over top of noisy, pointillistic grooves performed by a top-notch chamber ensemble of Floridian musicians who deftly execute Lee's complex scores. Together, the poems and music invite listeners to look beyond the postcard and experience Florida in all it's complexity, fragility, and beauty.
New York composer-drummer Willy Rodriguez presents his profoundly thoughtful second album as a leader, In The Unknown (I Will Find You), shaped by grief, memory, and the search for spiritual reunion. Deeply personal in origin yet expansive in sound, the music reflects a journey toward connection in the absence of certainty, with music serving as the sole space where reunion feels possible. Leading an unconventional trio without bass, Rodriguez joins forces with master musical polymath Leo Genovese and boundary-pushing saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock to form a fluid, boundless collective. Free of stylistic constraints, the trio allows the music to unfold multi-directionally through open forms and deeply responsive improvisation. The compositions function as emotional canvases rather than fixed structures, shaped equally by trust, intuition, and shared experience. Recorded at the legendary Van Gelder Studio, In The Unknown (I Will Find You) is an exploratory and intimate musical statement, brought vividly to life by three highly creative voices working in profound communion.
With Blues in Blueprint, bassist and composer Clovis Nicolas delivers his fifth album for Sunnyside Records and one of his most focused artistic statements to date. Framed by the subtitle "12 Variations on the Blues," the album explores the blues not as a fixed form, but as a living blueprint-flexible, expansive, and deeply woven into the DNA of jazz. For this project, Nicolas set himself a clear challenge: to record an entire program of blues and blues-related repertoire while drawing from a wide range of jazz eras, grooves, and formal approaches. The result is a cohesive yet adventurous journey, revealing the blues as both a historical foundation and an endlessly renewable source of expression. To bring this vision to life, Nicolas assembled an exceptional trio featuring Larry Goldings, heard here in a rare and welcome appearance on acoustic piano, and the masterful Carl Allen on drums. Recorded in New York and engineered by the legendary James Farber, the trio plays with deep rapport, elegance, and rhythmic authority throughout. The repertoire spans an unusually broad terrain. Traditional material such as "Old Stack O'Lee Blues," famously associated with Sidney Bechet, sits alongside modern classics by Duke Ellington, Ornette Coleman, Carla Bley, and Wes Montgomery, as well as a 19th-century hymn to close the album. Each selection reveals a different structural or emotional facet of the blues, from stop-time lyricism and bebop sophistication to free interplay and gospel-tinged introspection. Nicolas's original compositions are central to the album's identity. Pieces like "Hutch," "The Bass Speaks," and "Groovy Globy" reimagine blues forms through unconventional structures, contrapuntal writing, and fresh harmonic language, highlighting Nicolas's distinctive voice as both composer and bassist. His warm, vocal tone and melodic approach-particularly evident on "Abide with Me"-anchor the trio with quiet authority and emotional depth. Highlights abound: Goldings' lyrical imagination and harmonic elegance, Allen's refined swing and coloristic mastery (especially on brushes), and the trio's collective ease across styles-from R&B-inflected grooves on "Lawns" to open, free-form dialogue on Ornette Coleman's "Ramblin'," one of the album's most striking moments of spontaneous interaction. Blues in Blueprint is ultimately a meditation on continuity and reinvention. Rooted firmly in tradition yet forward-looking in spirit, the album presents the blues as a timeless framework-one that continues to inspire new shapes, new voices, and new stories. With Goldings and Allen at his side, Clovis Nicolas offers a blues album that is at once respectful, personal, and unmistakably contemporary.
Painting In Sound, Hayes Greenfield's third Sunnyside release, expands the perception of what jazz-and binaural, spatial, immersive music-can be. An acclaimed jazz musician, composer, and electroacoustic artist, Greenfield draws from decades of traditional and improvisational mastery and sonic exploration to create a recording that is resonant and substantial. Captured with Max/MSP and SPAT spatial and binaural software, the album positions the listener inside a fully three-dimensional sound field. Greenfield treats space as an equal voice, shaping air, distance, proximity, and motion with the same care he brings to melody, harmony, and rhythm. Using spatial placement and movement through the immersive field, lines arc and spiral, instruments and textures shimmer, orbit, recede, and tones approach, and dissolve. Rooted in jazz's spontaneity and reaching beyond traditional form, the record extends the line between performance and environment. It is an expansive statement from an artist pushing jazz into new perceptual dimensions.
