'Black Butterfly' is Brooklyn Funk Essentials eighth studio album and includes the bands recent hits 'Never Give Up', 'Bust The Bus Stop' and 'Life During Wartime'. Playlisted on BBC Radio 2 and Jazz FM and supported by Craig Charles and Cerys Matthews at 6 Music as well as many stations across Europe and the Americas. The album was produced and co-written by bassist Lati Kronlund and features Alison Limerick, Ebba �sman and Desmond Foster on vocals. Kronlund and Limerick have been enjoying the recent renewed interest in 'Where Love Lives'. Kronlund wrote and produced it for Limerick in 1990, it was remixed by Frankie Knuckles and David Morales and became a club classic and was featured in this year's John Lewis Christmas TV Ad. Arthur Baker heard the original in a club in 1991 that he contacted Kronlund about working together and they then formed Brooklyn Funk Essentials. Since then, Brooklyn Funk Essentials have built a devoted international following and notched up over 100 million streams. Fusing Soul, Hip Hop, Spoken Word, Jazz, Latin, and, of course, Funk, the band's journey began experimenting with drum machines and loops in Baker's Shakedown Sound Studio in Jersey City-hunting for that perfect beat. The early recordings featured greats such as Maceo Parker, Lenny Pickett, Tower of Power Horns, Michigan & Smiley, and Dizzy Gillespie, leading to the acclaimed debut 'Cool & Steady & Easy' (1994). Fast-forward to April 2024, when Kronlund reunited with Baker in Miami, rediscovering recordings featuring percussion prodigy Bashiri Johnson, which inspired new creative sparks for the next chapter of Brooklyn Funk Essentials. The band's acclaimed catalogue also includes 'In The Buzzbag' (1998), 'Make Them Like It' (2000), 'Watcha Playin' (2008), 'Funk Ain't Ova' (2015), 'Stay Good' (2019) and 'Intuition' (2023).

STRATA ACT (JOY CONTEMPORARY)

Pianist & composer Andrew Moorhead offers a strikingly personal suite of etudes-music born of inquiry, discipline, and risk. Conceived as a kind of private journal, these pieces explore phased time signatures, interlocking melodic cycles, and the elusive space between muscle memory and pure spontaneity. Moorhead's long pursuit of "total liberation" at the piano-having reshaped his technique after catastrophic injuries from a 47-foot fall in 2011-yields a language where skeletal gestures bloom into fluid counterpoint. The result is music that feels at once architectural and airborne. Finding the perfect bandmates in the towering bassist Fran�ois Moutin, and one of the most idiosyncratic drummers in jazz, Ari Hoenig, their deep rapport generates a kinetic, almost telepathic interplay. Mirage stands as a bold trio statement-intellect and intuition in vivid balance, and a compelling new chapter in Moorhead's evolving voice. "I thought I'd heard just about every approach to the piano, then Andrew Moorhead's new album came along - it's a great reminder that true originality is still out there." Scott Kinsey "... The music is exceptional and consistently engaging. A wonderful recording." All About Jazz

With their poetic and energetic music, the three storytellers from Italy, France, and Switzerland create an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean across the narrow mountain valleys. The music of these three musical personalities thrives on it's poetry, it's beautiful sound, it's depth of thought, and the interweaving of composition and improvisation. Original compositions meet Radiohead and Monteverdi variations and merge on Fables of Time into soulful music full of energy and subtle wit. A trio with three leaders, all three at home in different musical languages and technically at their peak. Together they form a unity that is rarely found. Thirteen years after the two highly acclaimed CDs What is There What is Not and Mavi, the long-awaited third release from this extraordinary trio is here. "The path offered to the listener is full of surprises and joy - you never know what's waiting around the corner: a stroll through a stately Renaissance melody, a sudden jolt of energy from free improvised passages, an evocation of village dance from an imaginary country that borders the desert, the Alps and the countryside, a flash of funky, and sometimes all these things at the same time", writes Francesco Martinelli in the liner notes.

Solo Motions is a deeply personal solo guitar album from Phil Sargent, presenting the instrument as a complete musical voice through unaccompanied performance. Recorded entirely without accompaniment, the album explores counterpoint, harmony, and improvisation with a focus on clarity, space, and emotional presence. Drawing inspiration from Bach's contrapuntal writing alongside modern harmonic language, Sargent reimagines jazz standards and original material through layered voices and inner motion. Influences from modern jazz and classical traditions are woven seamlessly into performances that balance structure with spontaneity. The album includes one original composition, "Kelita," alongside fresh interpretations of well-known repertoire, all shaped by a reflective and intimate approach to solo playing. Rather than emphasizing virtuosity for it's own sake, Solo Motions invites focused listening and rewards repeated engagement, highlighting nuance, restraint, and the expressive power of a single instrument. Solo Motions offers a quiet, immersive listening experience that captures stillness within motion and depth within simplicity.

After several successful album releases in a mainstream setting, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, known then as Christian Scott, chose to continue his path towards full control of his artistic identity. His 2015 release was titled Stretch Music, and it marked the creation of his own label of the same name. A bold move, both musically and professionally; one that nurtured his creative spirit and opened the way for a steady stream of albums that refined his sound and mission. Stretch Music was well received in the press, and from that point his listeners had a direct way to support his choices and sounds. Just as a climber can only see the clarity of the path when he reaches the summit, we can now look back at the direct line that brought the artist to this point. To commemorate this journey, Chief Adjuah presents to the world The Stretch Music 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition with three new tracks. The deluxe edition reaffirms Stretch Music's dynamic legacy and mission to create new sonic landscapes and musical languages that embrace possibility and innovation while still honoring tradition. The Stretch Music 10th anniversary offering features three new compositions from Chief Adjuah's upcoming releases. "Back 2 Back" - featuring Elena Pinderhughes, "Shared Stories of Rivals II" - featuring Logan Richardson and Weedie Braimah and "Take Off Your Cool" - featuring Robert Glasper. Each composition was written to address critical socio-political issues shaping our time. The Stretch Music 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition continues to exemplify the necessity of innovation in today's music. It does so by demonstrating the potential for adaptability and socio-cultural engagement while still pushing boundaries and incorporating a wide array of influences and cultures.

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.

Grammy Award-winning bassist Christian Dillingham presents 'As It Relates To Now, ' out May 15, 2026 on CD and vinyl. With Greg Ward on alto saxophone and Jeremy Cunningham on drums, the trio delivers a groove-driven, emotionally charged modern jazz record shaped by the tensions of our time-powerful, searching and deeply human.

Younge is Adrian Younge's magnum opus: an orchestral album written from the perspective of a hip hop producer, and a hip hop record composed with the discipline of classical and cinematic music. It reframes orchestral composition not as nostalgia, but as a living language built for reinterpretation. Inspired by composers like Lalo Schifrin, David Axelrod, Ennio Morricone, Galt MacDermot, Bo Hansson, and later visionaries such as Portishead's Geoff Barrow, the album draws from a lineage of emotionally charged, forward-thinking music that quietly shaped hip hop decades later through sampling. These were records defined by tension, restraint, and atmosphere-qualities Younge places at the center of this work. Recorded entirely to tape at Linear Labs, Younge unfolds like a lost soundtrack from an alternate history: modular compositions, dramatic movements, and themes that feel simultaneously ancient and futuristic. The music anticipates reuse-it invites sampling, deconstruction, and dialogue-without ever feeling unfinished. Adrian Younge has spent years testing orchestral music in front of live audiences, refining how large ensembles communicate energy, space, and narrative. That experience is embedded in the record. Every arrangement breathes. Every silence matters. This is not orchestral music collaborating with hip hop. It is orchestral music as hip hop-spoken fluently across time.

Prolific trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas announces the release of Transcend, featuring his all-star GIFTS Quintet. Blending electronics, lyricism, and high-energy interplay, the ensemble operates at full force, driven by a clear spiritual vision. Following his 2024 release GIFTS - honoring Billy Strayhorn - Transcend continues Douglas' exploration of legacy, spirituality, and ensemble innovation. Transcend features the same core group as GIFTS, including DownBeat Artist of the Year tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and two members of the Oscar-nominated post-rock trio Son Lux: guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. Expanded with the addition of cellist and MacArthur Genius Awardee Tomeka Reid, the quintet employs a radical new instrumentation. Douglas' new offering Transcend is created in observance of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, landmark works performed between 1965-1973, and widely regarded as the spiritual culmination of Ellington's career. Douglas draws inspiration from this ethos, by engaging with the spirit of openness, reverence, and humanity.

CIRCADIA

Here is Dizzy Gillespie's complete 1961 Monterey Jazz Festival performance, introduced by Diz as 'A Musical Safari'. This remarkable set reflects the quintet's working repertoire of the period, including a foray into bossa nova and features the superb Leo Wright and Argentinian pianist Lalo Schifrin. The first Monterey Jazz Festival was staged in 1958 and, since then, Jimmy Lyons and musical director John Lewis have traditionally gathered each September under the California sky many of the great names in jazz, along with several thousand enthusiastic listeners.

Borderland" is the first Amorphis album produced in collaboration with Danish producer Jacob Hansen. Before that, we had made three amazing records at Jens Bogren's studio. During the planning phase of the project, we strongly felt that it was time to explore something new and see what working with a different producer might bring to the table.

Amazing jazz interpretations of songs of Nirvana, Klaus Doldinger, Grace Jones, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, Talking Heads, Grandbrothers, Dave Pike, Empire Of The Sun, Joe Jackson, Eurythmics, Kruder & Dorfmeister. WEB WEB is starting a new chapter with Kover Kover. For the first time in the band's ten-year history, the focus is not on original compositions, but exclusively on cover versions - a radical change of perspective that seems entirely consistent. The musicians' stylistic openness inevitably led to an intriguing question: what would songs by Talking Heads, Kruder & Dorfmeister or Joe Jackson sound like if they had originally been penned by WEB WEB? The answer was obvious - you just had to put these pieces through the distinctive WEB WEB cosmos. The idea: to interpret favorite songs from completely different musical worlds in such a way that they fit organically into one's own musical language. The amazing thing is that it wasn't particularly difficult. Because a really good song can be reduced to two essential components - a melody that you can sing along to and a harmonic structure that remains instantly recognisable even in it's simplest form.

Chet Baker showed with his music that little bit of dark substance that exists in the human being - the shadow side - just as very few other jazz musicians have been able to do. However, such a reading that looks for traces of anguish and self-destruction in every note - and which has also been translated into a couple of films - has ended up overshadowing something very important: namely, that Chet Baker was a top-notch jazz musician, the creator of a unique and personal poetics, an interpreter who did not wallow in his own torments but who also knew how to take less introspective paths, including a superfine and very lively swing. Chet Baker's music had characteristics of it's own. Of a bebop nature in the fast pieces, he had in solos that complex and pulsating way that characterized this style. He differed from it in the soft timbre of the trumpet, which rarely indulged in the "flare-ups" typical of the boppers, and above all for the insistent use of pauses. These were precisely one of the cornerstones of his musical language. In the ballads the trumpeter-singer expanded them to the point of absurdity (and so did with the notes), making them spaces charged of meaning, as can be seen in the somber I'm a Fool to Want You, made famous by Billie Holiday, and also in the serene In a Sentimental Mood. In this final phase of his career, Baker often liked to have groups without drums with him because, in addition to allowing him to maintain a muffled volume in his singing and trumpet playing, the drumless situation guaranteed him greater freedom. Only the double bass player was left to keep time, a role here entrusted to a solid Knauer. In Ferrara, a sensitive French pianist, Michel Graillier, took the stage; in those years he was looking for a synthesis between the energy of McCoy Tyner and the harmonic language of Bill Evans. Finally, the presence of a piano allowed Stilo to limit the use of the other harmonic instrument, the guitar, in favor of the flute.

Born on the road in Japan, Jazz Messengers '70 is the only recorded document of a short-lived but powerful Messenger lineup. With Blakey at the helm, the band reclaims classic repertoire with urgency, fire, and a future-facing edge.

Long before bossa nova found it's way into the American ear, Lonnie Sattin was already there. Recorded in Brazil with it's master musicians and shaped by Sattin's unmatched versatility, this album captures a moment when worlds collide, revealing an artist whose vision, curiosity, and voice were always a few steps ahead of their time.

Cut in 1968, this session catches a trumpeter at the height of his command. Showing impact and restraint in equal measure, Don's playing here is focused, unforced, and powered by years of bandstands, studios, and broadcast work.

'Big Shoulders, Big Sounds' is a raw, high-wire baritone sax trio album led by Jimmy Farace with Clark Sommers on bass and Dana Hall on drums. Rooted in the baritone lineage and the Chicago scene, the music balances tradition and risk-big sound, fearless improvisation, and deeply personal originals alongside respectful nods to the past.

POLKA DOTS AND RAY BANS

Wellspring presents the arrival of a powerful new voice in creative music, unrelenting in passion and invention, while always transmitting a deeply empathic grace. Masterful composer-improviser DoYeon Kim is an unparalleled practitioner of the Korean gayageum (a silk-string zither), and is also in possession of a purposeful vocal intensity. This is her debut album as a bandleader, featuring fellow master musicians Tyshawn Sorey (drums), Mat Maneri (viola), Henry Fraser (bass). � Armed with an unlikely traditional instrument, flanked by three extraordinary improvisers, radiating a brash, acoustic strategy that simultaneously invokes folk universalism and a No Wave battle-stance, the Brooklyn-based virtuoso has dropped a volcanic sonic statement with grand humanist goals. Kim mingles Korean lullabies, fervent interactions between drums and strings, and pure instrumental expressions of musical self.�At times, she sounds like she can halt armies. Wellspring is a call for society to come together. � How the Seoul, South Korea-born 34-year-old came to be the centuries-old zither's leading (only?) practitioner of contemporary improvised music, reflects an expansive embrace of her own culture, her place in modern society, and her ascending recognition of music's liberatory power. � Kim has released works alongside Morris and Brandon Lopez. Her 2017 duo album GaPi with Chase Morrin garnered a Korean Grammy nomination. And she's shared stages with Kris Davis, Cooper-Moore and John H�bert, among many others. Now, Wellspring, is the recorded culmination of her growth period. It is a rumbling record, with wall-to-wall big sounds, all Kim compositions or group improvisations, built on immediacy and gusto. Even the aforementioned lullaby, "Walking in a Dream," which Kim performs with unrestrained vocal intensity, surrounded by Fraser's resonant bowing, Maneri's accompanying melody and counter figures, and Sorey adding atmospheric percussive touches-ends like a hurricane.��������� � Kim chose her accompanists not simply because of familiarity, but due to their emotionally unmediated relationship to the moment. "I don't want people thinking about their 'role' in the music" she says. "I want people free from their instrument, who are more about how they are making a sound and the relationship between our sounds." � That feeling and the album's humanist themes are well-displayed by Wellspring's two-part epic closer, the 20+-minute "Linear System"/"Calculus of the Soul." The instrumental "Linear Systems" is, according to Kim, constructed on the theme of the lifecycle, slowly building to a mass bowed drone, through a plucked and reactionary percussion section, before folding into the album's gentlest moment, and sliding into "Calculus of the Soul." "Please listen to this girl's story" the latter begins; then, with Maneri and Sorey flitting around her narration in noise-folk fashion, Kim speak-sings-then-screams of how between the sun's and the moon's daily arrival are countless formulas, and that the mystery of life is contained within those numbers. "That's how we live together!"

Forged over years of touring, brotherhood, and hard-earned trust, George Coleman's Octet arrives fully realized. This is an explosive first statement from a band driven by experience, discipline, and fearless improvisation, capturing a moment when deep roots, shared legacy, and uncompromising fire collide at full volume.

From renowned bassist and composer Ben Wolfe comes Any Time After Now, a deeply expressive new album that brings together some of the most exciting voices in modern jazz. Featuring Joel Ross (vibraphone), Sullivan Fortner (piano), Chris Lewis (tenor saxophone), and Aaron Kimmel (drums), the album explores original compositions with elegance, swing, and a cinematic sense of storytelling. Wolfe's signature sound - lyrical, grounded, and harmonically rich - anchors a set of ten tracks that range from uptempo swingers and bluesy grooves to lyrical waltzes and a closing bossa nova. Any Time After Now is a journey through mood and melody, featuring standout soloing and deeply intuitive ensemble interplay. Perfect for fans of acoustic jazz, post-bop, and artists like Ron Carter, Christian McBride, and Bobby Hutcherson, this album blends tradition with a contemporary touch that feels timeless.

Kenny Dorham's sublime 1956 live album, The Complete 'Round About Midnight At The Cafe Bohemia, features the trumpeter with J.R. Monterose, Kenny Burrell, Bobby Timmons, Sam Jones & Arthur Edgehill. This Blue Note Tone Poet Edition 2-CD set was produced by Joe Harley and remastered by Kevin Gray from the original tapes. Includes a booklet with never-before-seen photos by Francis Wolff and an essay by Syd Schwartz.

The Big Band of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is celebrating it's 20th anniversary and dedicating itself to French jazz. During the German occupation, it stood for freedom and resistance, and in the post-war period it became the soundtrack of existentialism and an expression of the attitude to life of an entire generation. In the nightclubs of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s, musicians such as Miles Davis and Sidney Bechet met Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Boris Vian. For many jazz musicians from the USA, Paris became a place of longing beyond racial segregation and the McCarthy era. The Deutsche Oper Berlin Big Band celebrates the spirit of those years with music by Michel Legrand, Jacques Brel, Boris Vian, and Django Reinhardt.