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 Fran�ois 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 Fran�ois 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 Fran�ois 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.

2017 release. Carlos Franzetti is that rare Renaissance Man, partnered in his musical entrepreneurship by his colorful wife, concert pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti. With this release we find Carlos once again bridging that supposed gap between contemporary classics and the jazz and "easy listening" world. It also shows a more reflective Carlos with the title track, "Luminosa," which is seemingly contemplative yet has a strict Bach-like classical structure. "Tango del Eco" by Horacio Salgan, arranged by Carlos, is more playful yet has quirky harmonies that are not expected. In his music you can hear the influence of Shostakovich and de Falla, Dave Grusin and Piazzolla, George Gershwin and Cole Porter... "anything goes." Therefore, a work such as "Concierto del Plata" is both challenging (both for listener and soloist) and yet totally accessible but, most importantly, memorable in this age of forgettable and "throwaway" downloadable music. The three interludes from the ballet, "Dante Porte�o" are just a taste of more to come from the ubiquitous and prolific pen (and mind) of Carlos Franzetti... a true original.

Pianist Sam Post has been a Bach acolyte since his earliest years behind the keys. His study and development have led Post down many musical avenues, but Bach's lessons remain ever present in his work, as can be heard on Post's new release, Post Bach, a collection of the pianist's unique interpretations of a number of the maestro's preludes and fugues, as well as original pieces that blend Bach's harmonic ideas with syncopated styles that have become Post's focus of late.

The MIT Wind and Festival Jazz Ensembles' recording Infinite Winds presents a wonderfully broad range of musical styles from composers who have surpassed the limits of jazz and modern classical composing. The pieces by Klein, Corea and Byron differ greatly but are performed skillfully by the two ensembles, highlighting all their nuances and dynamic vitality. On their new and musically diverse release Infinite Winds, the MIT Wind Ensemble and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble present three long form compositions by three innovative and highly regarded composers: Guillermo Klein, Chick Corea and Don Byron. The Corea and Byron pieces are world premi�re recordings on this Sunnyside release. Klein's Solar Return Suite and Byron's Concerto For Clarinet and Wind Ensemble feature special guest soloists, saxophonist Bill McHenry and clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, respectively.

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS / VARIATIONS

This recording features original compositions from practically all the band members and highlights the diversity of styles in composition as well as performance. You will surely enjoy a journey, from a funky tango, as the title suggests, to Peruvian rhythms on "Mariela's Dream" to the elegant Cuban "Contradanza", by the way of bolero, to the waltz, samba, milonga, to the final return of the jazz standard "Giant Steps".

WISHING ON THE MOON

Jazz vocalist presents an album of love songs, but not the usual round of familiar standards, although a few favorites are included; tracks include "All This & Heaven Too," "On The Bumpty Road To Love," "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" & "Stoppin' The Clock"

This is the first Meredith d'Ambrosio CD made up of only her own material, albeit in collaboration with jazz instrumentalist composers, Kenny Dorham, Harold Land, Clifford Brown, Tom McIntosh, eddie Higgins and Ralph Moore.

PAQUITO & MANZANERO - PAQUITO D'RIVERA PLAYS THE

JAZZ MEETS THE CLASSICS

As quiet as it is kept, vocalist/composer Meredith d'Ambrosio has become one of jazz music's most highly regarded storytellers and performers. Her artful approach to musical interpretation has been treasured by many and has inspired numerous fruitful collaborations. Her new recording, Some Other Time, finds her working with two masters of song, pianist Randy Halberstadt and trumpeter Don Sickler.

In a 2019 article, Forbes Magazine decreed that the two characteristics women need most to thrive in the business world are "grit and grace." Bass trombonist Jennifer Wharton has exemplified those qualities in the music she's made with her brass-forward band Bonegasm since it's 2019 debut. How else to explain Wharton's venture into improvising and bandleading after years in the classical world, big band sections and Broadway orchestra pits? Or her dedication to giving the oft-neglected trombone - and more to the point, her own bass trombone - it's place in the spotlight? And not least, that she's done so with a tricky balance of elegant arrangements, bold musicianship, and audacious wit?

In 1962, two of the most influential and talented instrumentalists that Cuba ever produced were brought together. Saxophonist/clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera was invited to hear pianist Chucho Vald�s at a local club in his Marianao neighborhood of South Havana. The two soon became a musical partnership that helped shape jazz in Cuba. Their paths would separate in 1980 when D'Rivera left Cuba. // Sixty years after their initial meeting, the pair has finally reunited to create a monumental new recording. Their I Missed You Too! Marks D'Rivera and Vald�s's first recording since they were both members of Cuba's most influential jazz/fusion ensemble, Irakere.

On Sanctuary, the gifted drummer and composer Matt Slocum continues his long-standing practice of documenting original music and arrangements, eight songlike pieces in total. It's his fourth recorded encounter with master pianist Gerald Clayton, a friend and musical partner for close to two decades, who stands out among a high-technical-bar generational peer group for applying his nuanced touch and precise articulation to telling stories that blend the dialects and syntaxes of the tradition and the here-and-now. It's Slocum's first recorded interaction with bass giant Larry Grenadier, a fixture on the international jazz scene for his 25-year association with Brad Mehldau Trio, as well as consequential engagements with Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, Charles Lloyd, Joshua Redman, and Mark Turner.

The variety and fluidity of bodies of water has always fascinated guitarist/composer Scott DuBois and inspires his first solo guitar recording, Summer Water. The view of Lake Michigan from his window was a daily reminder of the range of water's expressive forces. During the bone-chilling Chicago winter of 2019, he wrote pieces for solo guitar that would not only utilize his symphonic compositional voice but would emulate the sound without the use of overdubs, loops or layering. DuBois has captured the textures and colors of an orchestra and has maintained a bold sound, not just in terms of volume, but in the intensity, much as one hears from an orchestra, whether loud or soft. He has also created great variety within the sound and the compositions, an important aspect of his work. All of this was accomplished with the barest of essentials: a solo guitar. // This double LP set is the vinyl version of the CD album released in the spring of 2021.

Hailed as "a blazing hot mess of awesome" by The New York City Jazz Record, the Michael Leonhart Orchestra (MLO) traverses a huge swath of musical terrain, guided by the highly developed ears, ceaselessly omnivorous tastes and playful yet meticulous artistry of it's leader, Michael Leonhart. Following their 2018 debut album The Painted Lady Suite, MLO will release their second full length, Suite Extracts Vol. I on August 30, via Sunnyside Records. // The surprising collection documents an aspect of the MLO 's mission: playing covers, but in the Leonhart way - with widely disparate material ranging from Fela Kuti to Spinal Tap to Howlin' Wolf to Ornette Coleman curated into song sequences, forming anarchic yet internally coherent thoughts on some of Leonhart's chief musical passions. The album features notable guests Chris Potter, Nels Cline, Donny McCaslin, John Ellis, Erik Friedlander and many others in the context of a vibrant and unclassifiable 20-piece ensemble. // The MLO has developed and refined the suites through the course of it's monthly residencies at Jazz Standard, one of New York's most prestigious jazz rooms. Leonhart continues to pursue his vision there, with unconventional instrumentation and a shapeshifting community of sought-after players from a variety of cutting-edge scenes and disciplines.

Hailed as "a blazing hot mess of awesome" by The New York City Jazz Record, the Michael Leonhart Orchestra (MLO) traverses a huge swath of musical terrain, guided by the highly developed ears, ceaselessly omnivorous tastes and playful yet meticulous artistry of it's leader, Michael Leonhart. Following their 2018 debut album The Painted Lady Suite, MLO will release their second full length, Suite Extracts Vol. I on August 30, via Sunnyside Records. // The surprising collection documents an aspect of the MLO 's mission: playing covers, but in the Leonhart way - with widely disparate material ranging from Fela Kuti to Spinal Tap to Howlin' Wolf to Ornette Coleman curated into song sequences, forming anarchic yet internally coherent thoughts on some of Leonhart's chief musical passions. The album features notable guests Chris Potter, Nels Cline, Donny McCaslin, John Ellis, Erik Friedlander and many others in the context of a vibrant and unclassifiable 20-piece ensemble. // The MLO has developed and refined the suites through the course of it's monthly residencies at Jazz Standard, one of New York's most prestigious jazz rooms. Leonhart continues to pursue his vision there, with unconventional instrumentation and a shapeshifting community of sought-after players from a variety of cutting-edge scenes and disciplines.

There is something entrancing about the natural cycle of water. There is the constant ebb and flow. Then there are the nearly limitless variations, like the lightness of sprinkling rain, babbling brooks or the relentless force of crashing waves and storms. The variety and fluidity of bodies of water has always fascinated guitarist/composer Scott DuBois and inspires his first solo guitar recording, Summer Water, which is also the first recording on his new record label / publishing company, Watertone Music. // DuBois's 2015 album, Winter Light (ACT), began a series of recordings featuring music inspired by the four seasons that would be performed by varied ensembles. Winter Light featured DuBois's quartet of the past 15 years, featuring Gebhard Ullmann, Thomas Morgan and Kresten Osgood, while his 2017 album, Autumn Wind (ACT), added a string and wind ensemble in addition to his quartet. // Summer Water is the third release in the series and a true departure for DuBois. The view of Lake Michigan from his window was a daily reminder of the range of water's expressive forces. During the bone-chilling Chicago winter of 2019, he wrote pieces for solo guitar that would not only utilize his symphonic compositional voice but would emulate the sound without the use of overdubs, loops or layering. DuBois has captured the textures and colors of an orchestra and has maintained a bold sound, not just in terms of volume, but in the intensity, much as one hears from an orchestra, whether loud or soft. He has also created great variety within the sound and the compositions, an important aspect of his work. All of this was accomplished with the barest of essentials: a solo guitar.