Eyal Winter

Israeli guitarist Andy Watts has devoted his life to playing the blues. His new album, Blues on Fire (distributed through Linktone, produced by Andy Watts and Eyal Klein) released on March 16, 2018 “…is dedicated to the beauty of the electric guitar.” Born and raised in the Middle East, Watts was pulled into American blues music when he heard it over the radio at age 12. He went on to have a decades-long career as one of Israel’s premier blues guitarists. Watts has worked with Johnny Winter, Bernard Allison, Lucky Peterson and Joe Louis Walker. Walker, who appears as a special guest on Blues on Fire, is part of a roster of fifteen musicians from Israel and the United States who helped record this album.

Stavanger, Norway-based Gunhild Seim & Time Jungle's sophomore release delivers further evidence of trumpeter Seim's mature compositional skills, also featured on her debut, Time Jungle (Drollehola Records, 2009). Seim matches intensity and adventurous improvisation—typical of improvisers coming from her hometown such as reed player Frode Gjerstad and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love—with nuanced, melodic lines of chamber jazz that are identified with the ECM style of Nordic jazz, all fused into organic, collective interplay.

100 Notable Books of 2021: The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review .