Upstate New York trio Play Time may be a new band, but its members hail from a wide swath of established underground scenes. Drummer Booker Stardrum sits behind the kit for rising jazz jammers SML, while Moog player Ben Vida co-founded the turn-of-the-century minimalist-ambient group Town & Country, and logged time in post-emo fountainhead Joan of Arc. Saxophonist Will Epstein has played with Darkside members Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington, and worked as a film composer. All three have released solo albums that further expand their palettes, moving into ambient (Vida), experimental (Stardrum), and singer/songwriter (Epstein) realms.
With all that group experience and wealth of individual styles, Play Time try something…
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Three years ago, saxophonist 
1925 was a landmark year for US recording studios, marking the introduction of electronic microphones to replace the huge gramophone horns previously used to harvest the sound of singers and musicians. This brought about a dramatic leap in sound quality and established 1925 as an effective year zero for modern compilations.
Pascal Bideau’s second album as 
British-born, Canada-raised saxophonist and EWI master Seamus Blake hosts a soul-jazz revival on this tribute to funky sax legend Eddie Harris. Blake focuses everything on electric, echo-plexed, funky soul-jazz. He’s surrounded himself with a killer band that includes electric bassist Tim Lefebvre, drummer Corey Fonville, and Hammond B-3 organist and pianist Sam Yahel. Vocalist Dawn Pemberton guests. The set was recorded in Vancouver and co-produced by Blake, Scott Morin, and Cellar Music boss Cory Weeds.
…newly remastered by Technology Works from the original source tapes.
Trumpeter and composer Ralph Alessi cuts a distinctive figure in contemporary jazz, with a remarkable ability to use the same tools as most – acoustic instrumentation, quartet and quintet formations, bop vocabulary – and still come up with something that sounds like no one else.
Guitarist 
Toronto was always a sort of musical melting pot, so it is no wonder that the core trio of Toronto-based, Brazilian native multi-instrumentalist Felipe Sena with co-writers Artu Bastos and Dan McLay that goes by the name of 
All-star jazz quintet 
Clay is the debut full-length collaboration between 
In 2018, violist and composer 
South African pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini returns with The Myths We Choose, an album whose music advocates for a better world and greater responsibility toward the future. Working with his South African trio at the core, Makhathini invites a number of relevant guests for a program comprising thirteen original compositions (three of them with reprises). Here, he explores new sounds and genres, with several tracks signaling a shift in mindset while retaining the rooted spirituality that has become his trademark signature.