Kurt Elling has finally delivered on the potential promised on his 1997 album The Messenger. It is true that Elling has been terrifically consistent in his offerings with very inspired performances– even if the material and its execution were not nearly as adventurous as that storied earlier recording. But Man in the Air is the extension of all the wandering risk of The Messenger. Here Elling and his regular band – pianist Laurence Hobgood, bassist Rob Amster, and drummer Frank Parker Jr. – are joined by current vibe king Stefon Harris and Jim Gailloreto on soprano saxophone.

The album Who We Are is the first studio recording of the collaboration between pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and saxophonist/composer Marius Neset. They are joined on the record by flautist Ingrid Softeland Neset and cellist Louisa Tuck. The music, composed by Neset, was recorded at Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the course of three days in December, 2023.

America/Brasil is a rollicking, celebratory album that keeps Herbie Mann on the winning streak he started with the release of Peace Pieces in 1995. Recorded during a week of concerts to mark his 65th birthday in April 1995, this disc is much stronger than its immediate predecessor, Celebration, also taken from the same week of live concert performances at New York's Blue Note jazz club. The material here is superb, and the playing top-notch. As the title implies, the emphasis here is on Mann's Brazilian side, but there are touches of the non-Brazilian with Bill Evans' "Peri's Scope" and Miles Davis' "All Blues." "Summertime" is recast in an Afro-Cuban mode with Paquito D'Rivera sharing the solo space on alto sax. However, lengthy Brazilian showstoppers are placed at the beginning, middle, and end of this wonderful disc. The opening "Keep the Spirits Singing" is propelled by the polyrhythmic pulse of percussionists Cyro Baptista and "Café," and the 17-minute title track finale features trumpeters Randy Brecker and Claudio Roditi, trombonist Jim Pugh, and guitarist Romero Lubambo.

Silent, Listening is a major addition to ECM’s distinguished line of solo piano recordings, featuring one of the outstanding improvising pianists and jazz masters of our time: Fred Hersch. The album features seven original creations and a handful of well-chosen standards, including Billy Strayhorn’s “Star-Crossed Lovers”, Sigmund Romberg’s “Softly, As In A Morning Sunrise”, Alec Wilder’s “Winter Of My Discontent” and Russ Freeman’s “The Wind”, all played with the focus, sensitivity and gracefulness for which Hersch is renowned. Developed with producer Manfred Eicher in the responsive acoustics of the Lugano studio, the album was recorded in May 2023.

This is their 6th album. It contains 11 songs, including the theme song from the TV drama "Quartet," the classic live song "Cross View," and a cover of Coldplay's "Viva La Vida. The trio was formed in 2011 by three members who had been playing in bands with different personalities, aiming to create a passionate, cool, and new piano trio sound based on the concept of modern jazz-rock. They have performed at the "Brisbane Festival" in Australia, and have toured South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, France, and three times in China (7 cities in total).

The fcp full album "FRAGILE", which has been completely feathered through the previous "BUTTERFLY", is a masterpiece that is full of freedom and full of attractiveness.

Earlier this year, instrumental jazz trio fox capture plan announced that they will be releasing a brand new studio record on September 5th. Titled “CAPTURISM”, this will be the group’s first album since last October’s “UИTITLƎD” and is currently planned to include ten new songs from the band.

An apparently harmless phrase can hide something altogether darker. That quote neatly sums up Triosk’s second album The Headlight Serenade. Brilliantly recorded by the young Australian trio, the album’s crystal clarity makes it sound like it’s floating on air. Triosk’s inventiveness and enthusiasm to rethink musical boundaries makes The Headlight Serenade a striking, living work. Rarely is such cerebral music so engaging.

Moment Returns set a new standard for improvisational musicians working with electronics, as the band sought for playful new ways to combine the sound and unity of purpose of the great jazz piano trios with new compositional forms and the textures and processes of minimalism and electronic music. The result is warm and feline and quietly innovative, a triumph of musical charisma over mere technique.

Paradise Cinema is a project led by multi-instrumentalist Jack Wyllie (Portico Quartet/Szun Waves) with contributions from Khadim Mbaye, Tons Sambe and Laurence Pike. The first, eponymous, Paradise Cinema record, released in 2020, was recorded in Dakar and featured the dense rhythms of Mbalax music combining with Wyllie’s textural saxophone and synth playing.

Vocalist and violinist Alice Zawadzki, pianist Fred Thomas (who also plays the vielle and drums here) and bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado present a rare alchemy on their trio debut, fusing folk idioms from a multitude of sources with free flowing interplay and fluid structures. Inhabiting their own stylistic realm, the trio encompasses folk song, chamber music, improvisation and acoustic jazz, and on Za Górami they present the full span of their reach in a mesmerizing whole. Ladino traditionals are heard alongside striking renditions of Gustavo Santaolalla’s “Suéltate Las Cintas” and Simón Díaz’s “Tonada De Luna Llena”. The title-lending Polish traditional “Za Górami” is performed in a poignant interpretation by Zawadzki and the Renaissance piece “Je Suis Trop Jeunette” finds a kindred spirit in Fred Thomas’s monody-inspired setting of James Joyce’s in “Gentle Lady”. The album was recorded at the Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher.

Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique. Here Weber presents a cycle in four parts, plus an opening and an epilogue, in which the German pianist is joined by a group of four euphoniums, a trombone quartet as well as flautist Anna-Lena Schnabel and Michel Godard on the seldomly used “serpent” brass instrument, together performing a work that blurs the line where improvisation ends and composition begins.

This perfectly harmonising duo focuses on strong contrasts and thrives on empathy and intense exchanges. – Deutschlandfunk. Having previously joined forces on several Louis Sclavis recordings for ECM, including the clarinettist’s last album Characters On A Wall, in recent years Sclavis and pianist Benjamin Moussay increasingly focused on their two-way communication, playing expansive and well-received concerts throughout Europe. Now, in a programme of originals – two-thirds from the pianist’s pen, the remaining third by the clarinettist – the French duo dreams up a world of chamber conversations that juxtaposes lyrical contemplation with whimsical inventiveness in a joyous, concentrated collaboration. Thoughtfully, the duo envelopes delicate themes in warm improvisations that never rush, but patiently explore the written material with rare creativity and in fluid dialogues. Recorded at Studios La Buissonne, Southern France in March 2024, Unfolding was produced by Manfred Eicher.

“Pure beauty is the common tone of Trygve Seim and Frode Haltli. There is something folk-song-like in this music – intersections where secular and sacred music meet to dance”. This is what the German weekly paper Die Zeit said on the duo’s debut release Yeraz back in 2008 and while the statement still holds up today, the rapport between the saxophonist and the accordionist has grown even more fluid in the meantime. On Our Time Trygve and Frode exchange counterpuntal glances, lyrical swells and textural explorations with grace, eloquence and utmost nuance, presenting a programme of originals, improvisations and evocative recastings of traditional folk songs from Ukraine and North-India. Recorded at the Himmelfahrtskirche in Munich, in 2023, and produced by Manfred Eicher, on Our Time the saxophonist and accordionist’s tones meet in a surreal and magical dance.