Tidal Love Numbers

Love is connection. Love is gratitude. Love is passion. Love is audacity. These qualities define tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis’ second album with the glorious Red Lily Quintet: For Mahalia, With Love. Whereas Lewis used his transformative talents to illuminate renaissance man George Washington Carver in a whole new way on Jesup Wagon, the groundbreaking 2021 masterpiece that swept most major jazz polls, the saxophonist does the same for the pioneering gospel-music force of nature Mahalia Jackson. But this time it’s personal, because Lewis lived her music growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., playing there in churches as a youth and being nurtured by his grandmother, who had received Mahalia’s singing like a bolt from above.

"Kate Elliott" published her first novel with DAW Books in 1992.She is currently working on the Crossroads series (Spirit Gate and Shadow Gate, with Traitors’ Gate ), published by Tor Books (USA) and Orbit Books (UK). It’s an “HBO-style” fantasy with a focus on character and landscape, and an epic plot.

El-P, aka El Producto, is one of hip-hop's most obstinate and adventurous pioneers, combining a lo-fi old-school aesthetic with a progressive rock musician's inclination to push boundaries. He has never succumbed to the demands of corporate rap, instead choosing to pursue his own decidedly non-commercial direction. In the mid-'90s, he developed a strong reputation with the groundbreaking trio Company Flow, a band whose achievements include El-P-produced LP Funcrusher Plus on Rawkus Records, a label considered by many one of the best for intelligent hip-hop. Over the group's auspicious stint together, he proved he was himself capable of intense lyricism as well as sonic production so powerful it could stand on its own.

Following two majorly successful albums as a dance queen all over the world, the alto pop diva extraordinaire Anastacia released her third album, a self-titled one, to huge reception practically all over the globe. Interestingly enough, the only location where the album was never released was in the United States, where the American singer's flame never burst into wildfire. It's a real shame, though; Anastacia was a transition album for a multi-dimensional artist as she shifted from disco flavor into passionate power pop, and this haunting presentation would've been her ticket for gold in the States…