Cécile McLorin Salvant makes big orchestral jazz feel refreshingly intimate on 2026’s With Every Breath I Take. Her first fully orchestral album, it finds the Grammy-winning singer joined by the Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckely, with arrangements by Darcy James Argue. Also by her side is her trio, featuring longtime pianist Sullivan Fortner along with bassist David Wong and drummer Kush Abadey.
Rather than simply picking a set of well-worn standards, Salvant curates her choices, embracing songs that speak to a woman’s point of view and experience in the world. It’s a vibe she underscores whether revisiting her own “Left Over” off 2015’s For One to Love or echoing that song’s heartbreak on Buddy Johnson’s soulful…
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There’s some significance to the release of Winter Songs – it’s the first album featuring Steve Swallow as a leader since 2013, and the first one since the passing of Carla Bley, his multi-decade partner in life and music. Considering the folks he’s most associated with – free jazz pioneer Jimmy Giuffre, vibraphone maverick Gary Burton, genre-agnostic guitarist John Scofield, quirky keyboardist Jamie Saft, his artistically unique spouse – fans might be surprised at the vibe on Winter Songs. Joined by saxophonist Chris Cheek, trumpeter Mike Rodriguez, pianist Gil Goldstein, guitarist Steve Cardenas, and drummer Adam Nussbaum, Swallow takes us back in time, when jazz was transitioning from bebop to hard bop in small clubs around New York. Though known for his…
Every once in a while, a recording surfaces to remind us of the value of unfettered creativity, spontaneity, and experimentalism, 
Normally found fronting his trio, leading Spanish pianist Daniel Garcia moves to a solo format for The Hero’s Journey. Composed during a period of family illness and bereavement, it is perhaps surprising that the album is not dark in any way.
Claudia Quintet’s founder, 
Pianist Jason Moran, sound sculpture BlankFor.Ms, and drummer Marcus Gilmore reunite for their second album of boundary pushing live and electronically processed music with 2026’s 
The second act of one of Europe’s most fearless experimental rocks bands of the 70s and early 80s continues, now running much longer than Act One. OM was the band who set out in 1972 to bypass all the dauntless bands dabbling in jazz-rock fusion by bringing rock straight into the free improvisation realm. Now in their seventies, the members of OM seem just as determined as ever to keep making this challenging but ultimately rewarding music.
How wonderful to see 
The concept of virtuosity is often misunderstood as an outsized display of technique. In truth though, by definition and in reality, it’s about mastery. Such expertise is just as likely to be shown in measured command as it is to appear as fireworks, and this absorbing duo date is a firm reminder of that fact. Legendary bassist 
With Lucid, his fifth album as a leader before his 30th birthday, composer/pianist 
In 2019, Gilles Peterson asked London-based jazz drummer/producer Jake Long to assemble a band to back American saxophonist Gary Bartz at the first We Out Here Festival. He chose Maisha, his forward-thinking electric jazz and improv group. Following the wildly successful show, the parties booked a recording studio to deliver the raw, darkly vibrant 
If it’s nearly impossible to define jazz, Miles Davis, perhaps inadvertently, gave it a shot in 1956. The context was mundane: His band was fulfilling Davis’ obligations to Prestige, recording several sides’ worth of music that the indie would release mostly over four albums — Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and Steamin’ — while the trumpeter moved on to a bigger deal and wider audience at Columbia. Those recordings, plus another session featuring Sonny Rollins in John Coltrane’s place on saxophone, are chronicled in a new box set from Craft recordings, assembled to celebrate Davis’ centennial.
Feebles, Fables and Ferns captures a rare duo session between guitarist Mick Goodrick and pianist Fred Hersch. Recorded in August 1988 at Hersch’s studio in New York, the album provides an intimate display of the superbly matched improvisational skills of two musicians in full flight.
When does jazz become more than a set of tools and techniques, and what is the crucial element that makes it into its own unmistakable form?