Anna Wise Gently Powerful, Live (as If It Were Forever) (2021)

Tone Poem is the third album by saxophonist Charles Lloyd's Americana jazz quintet the Marvels – guitarist Bill Frisell, pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland. Cut over several years in California studios and from a Madrid stage, it comprises six covers and three Lloyd originals. The album marks the first time the band have recorded without singers. At 82, Lloyd is a master of the form who knows what he wants from his sidemen and how to get it.

In 2015, Melody Gardot proved with Currency of Man that she was able to step out of her comfort zone, because this album, which looked like her hair, clearly showed a soul'n'blues oriented facet.

Shelby Lynne has followed her own sometimes reckless, always adventuresome muse throughout her career. Just a Little Lovin' is her personal homage to the late, legendary Dusty Springfield.

The charismatic saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis is the musician of the moment in the broad field of contemporary jazz. After the internationally acclaimed albums Molecular and Code of Being, he now presents a double CD of a memorable concert with his top-class quartet. The demanding but thoroughly melodic compositions of Molecular shine on this live album compared to the studio album in an unleashed form and with much desire to create and courage for open interplay. “The live recording shows not only the great joy of playing and pleasure in interplay and groove, but also the musical maturation process of four great musicians”, writes Florian Bissig in the liner notes about the concert immortalised on this double CD, and, “It was a celebration that made one’s ears perk up…James Brandon Lewis’ saxophone sound seemed to radiate a quivering liveliness and an expressive urgency rarely heard before. The four musicians, for all their precision and refinement of interplay, seemed to be playing as if it were the last time.”

The word loom has two distinct meanings. It can mean a machine that weaves individual threads together to form a fabric. As a verb, it describes the action of something appearing threatening, distorted or large in scale.