London-based vocalist and songwriter ISQ (Irene Serra) announces her fifth studio album 'The Silence is Deafening', arriving on 23rd October and previewed by single 'Animal', out 22nd May.
"A melting pot of genres - jazz, pop, acoustic and experimental - which all blend together to entrancing effect" - TimeOut
"Honing the soulful possibilities of improvisatory music" – Clash
The befitting lead single is a rhythmic alt-pop tune that draws on the tension between different generations. Warm and determined, it sits with the complexity of a mother-daughter relationship. The clashes and the closeness, the misunderstandings that only years and perspective can untangle.
ISQ: "Animal is about the mother/daughter relationship in all its complexity; how it shifts, clashes, softens and deepens across time,” Irene explains. “What I once experienced as difference, I now see as bravery and resilience. It's a very personal track, but I think it taps into something universal about mothers, daughters, and the sometimes messy way love evolves over time."
After eight years away, ISQ returns with the meticulously created 'The Silence is Deafening' (out 23rd October) marking a significant shift in her sound - darker, guitar-driven and cinematic - sitting somewhere between alternative and Massive Attack. It is a record preoccupied with women's lives; the ones lived loudly and the ones lived in careful silence: "The songs on this album were a long time in the making,” Irene explains. “This is my attempt to make sense of a shifting world and of the elusive human condition - its unexpected beauty and moments of light, alongside the sadness, the quiet and the everyday violence it contains. It is a tribute to my mother’s resilience and to the countless women whose stories echo her own.”
Vocalist and songwriter Irene Serra has spent over two decades building something quietly singular within the UK's contemporary music scene. Known more by word of mouth than by headline, ISQ is her original compositional project - music that reveals its full weight only in the rooms it was made for: intimate clubs, jazz venues and concert halls where Irene’s presence and the band's collective intensity can truly breathe.
ISQ draws together a sophisticated jazz musicianship, alternative pop sensibilities and rich electronic textures. The current line-up of Richard Sadler (bass), Chris Nickolls (drums/electronics) and Luca Boscagin (guitar) counts credits across Neil Cowley Trio, Andy Sheppard and Cinematic Orchestra among its members, bringing both improvisational fluency and contemporary edge to the project.
Critically praised across her catalogue - from the TimeOut London Critics' Choice 'Too' to the Clash Magazine-lauded 'Requiem For The Faithful' - Irene has built a devoted following over two decades of uncompromising work. This fifth studio album is the work of an artist who has always known exactly what she wanted to say, and is finally ready for everyone else to hear it.
As the 2010s dawned, acclaimed singer and composer Gretchen Parlato released a pair of albums that redefined the possibilities of vocal jazz in the post-millennium era. In a Dream (2009) and The Lost and Found(2011) didn’t merely expand the genre—they reshaped its contours, setting a new creative standard that continues to reverberate today. Now, with her eagerly anticipated new album The Wise Ones, Parlato returns to those formative roots, revisiting their kaleidoscopic beauty through a contemporary lens shaped by time, experience, and transformation.
More than a decade of profound personal, artistic, and global change has passed since those recordings, and The Wise Ones reflects both continuity and evolution. The album draws nourishment from the same soil that sustained her early work while allowing new branches to grow—reaching outward with deeper emotional resonance, refined perspective, and renewed curiosity. Reuniting with many of the trailblazing musicians who helped bring that original vision to life, Parlato revisits a sound that was once boldly new and now feels timeless, enriched by everything that has unfolded since.
With those landmark early albums, Parlato forged a singular voice that honored the deep tradition of jazz while fearlessly advancing it—infused with luminous elements of R&B, soul, pop, West African, and Brazilian music. Her originality was immediately recognized, marking her as an artist not only fluent in the language of jazz, but capable of expanding it. That distinctive musical vocabulary continued to grow on 2013’s Grammy-nominated Live in NYC, followed by Flor(2021), a Brazilian-tinged release met with rapturous acclaim and earning her a second Grammy nomination. Her most recent album, Lean In (2023), brought a third nomination, celebrating two decades of creative partnership with Benin-born guitarist and vocalist Lionel Loueke.
While each successive release revealed new dimensions of Parlato’s wide-ranging vision, the foundational sound she pioneered fifteen years earlier never stood still—it matured, deepened, and evolved alongside her collaborators. At the same time, the early promise of In a Dream and The Lost and Foundwas fully realized as those albums went on to profoundly influence a new generation of creative musicians. The Wise Ones inhabits that lineage with grace, luxuriating in the beauty of its origins while extending the canopy—adding fresh emotional layers, lived-in wisdom, and a quietly powerful sense of arrival.
Scheduled for release September 11, 2026, via Edition Records, The Wise Ones reunites Gretchen Parlato with a core circle of collaborators from her earliest recordings, alongside fellow travelers from across her remarkable artistic journey. Robert Glasper, Gerald Clayton, and Mark Guiliana—each now firmly established among the most influential artists of their generation—return to the table, meeting Parlato on a shared plane, shaped by time, trust, and shared history.
“I’m so grateful to have formed such profound bonds with the musicians on this album,” Parlato shares with a smile. “Beyond the artistry, we’re friends—humans on a deeply connected path. Creating this album felt almost effortless… almost. Of course, it required immense thought and care, fueled by love, admiration, and respect.”
Singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Alan Hampton—who also co-produced the album with Parlato—adds, “These songs were written at very different moments in our lives: some brand new, others nearly twenty years old. Gretchen had a beautiful vision of weaving them into one cohesive work—exploring time, love, loss, and personal growth, while honoring the shared history that connects us all.”
That sense of family extends to a powerful group of special guests, including vocalists Becca Stevens and Moonchild’s Amber Navran, both of whom cite Parlato as a formative influence. “Gretchen has had a huge impact on my artistry and musicianship,” Navran says. “In a Dream and The Lost and Found came out while I was in college, and we would sit together and listen to those records front to back, fully taking in every detail.” Stevens echoes the sentiment: “If you encounter a contemporary, jazz-adjacent vocalist—myself included—they’re influenced by Gretchen Parlato, whether they realize it or not. She raised the bar into entirely new stratospheres, especially through her deeply authentic reimagining and a vocal sound that could only begin with her.”
Stevens joins Parlato and Hampton on a haunting reinterpretation of Tears for Fears’ 1982 classic “Mad World,” transformed here into a devastating reflection of our times. What begins as a stark, mantra-like repetition slowly unfolds through layered vocals and the shimmering resonance of West African kora. Stevens and Parlato first crossed paths during their New York City years—mutual admirers whose creative connection eventually grew through shared collaborator and longtime friend Taylor Eigsti.
Though Parlato’s collaboration with Amber Navran is a first, their chemistry feels immediate and assured. Their co-written song blossomed into the album’s title track, “The Wise Ones”—not a declaration, but a question. The song reflects a process of becoming, a theme made explicit in Parlato’s lyrics.
“Having recently turned 50, I feel like I may be right in the middle of my lifetime— balanced between my younger self and my future elder,” Parlato reflects. “I try to stay grateful and present, without clinging or drifting too far ahead. There’s a necessary acceptance in honoring every version of who we were, are, and will become. Everything changes. Everything transforms. I wrote the first line of the song as a reminder to myself: someday this will be long ago. That phrase instantly shifts me into gratitude and presence. It opens my heart.”
Continuing the album’s expanding web of connection is guest singer-songwriter and producer Josh Mease, a longtime friend and collaborator. Mease attended Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts alongside Glasper and Hampton, before all three continued their studies at The New School in New York City. Introduced to Parlato in 2004, Mease contributes two compositions to the album: “Landslide” and “In My Bed,” the latter revived from a demo Parlato first heard in 2005, recorded by Mease and Glasper during their student years—another thread lovingly pulled forward through time.
The moment the opening track, “Capricorn,” emerges, the listener is gently pulled into a world of return and rebirth—soulful, hushed, and luminous. Composed by Alan Hampton with lyrics co-written by saxophonist Matt Parker, the song immediately spotlights Hampton’s gift for atmosphere and emotional economy. Jacob Mann’s shimmering synth textures and Gerald Clayton’s introspective soloing deepen the sense of awakening, setting the tone for what unfolds.
Throughout The Wise Ones, the duets between Hampton and Parlato form a subtle emotional spine. Bandmates and creative partners for more than twenty years, their voices move together with an ease that only long familiarity allows—intertwining, yielding, and lifting one another in ways that feel instinctive rather than arranged. There is a shared breath to their singing, a tenderness that reveals how deeply their musical languages have grown side by side.
That intimacy returns later in another Hampton original, “It’s You,” where his songwriting again takes center stage. Draped in a soft, enveloping bed of sound, the lyrics ache and spiral around the residue of past love, carried by the blend of their voices—warm, vulnerable, and quietly devastating. In moments like these, The Wise Ones makes a compelling case for Hampton not only as a trusted collaborator, but as a songwriter of rare emotional clarity—one whose voice, at last, is being heard in full.
Meeting in the New York City jazz scene in 2004, Robert Glasper was one of Parlato’s earliest collaborators, contributing his most memorable arrangement of SWV’s “Weak” and composing the title track, “In a Dream”, to which Parlato added the lyric. Their partnership deepened with their arrangement of Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years” and Bill Evans’ “Blue In Green” for Parlato’s follow up CD, The Lost and Found, which he co-produced before rising to the peak of the Jazz and R&B worlds.
“Gretchen Parlato is easily one of my favorite singers to collaborate with,” shares Glasper. “She understands, honors, and respects all the genres of music she touches. She’s not singing at it, she’s singing in it. It’s a rare thing to be able to cross over and get the attention of people in R&B music. That’s not something you really learn, that’s a gift that is given to you. Gretchen definitely has that gift.”
When Parlato invited him to reconnect for The Wise Ones, Glasper responded with unmistakable enthusiasm, appearing on more than half of the album. Together, they cowrote the luminous “Rainbow,” a song that uses imagery from the natural world to reflect emotional states—acknowledging the present moment, the inevitability of change, and offering a radiant expression of gratitude and pride. Another collaboration, “Block the Sun,” is a meditation on creative flow and interconnectedness: a reminder to step out of one’s own way and allow shared creative energy to move freely, without obstruction.
“I was so happy to create with Rob again - it was a perfect example of what has become a theme and feeling of the album. There was a tacit understanding of trust, ease, and adoration between every single person in the room. We were able to turn the essence of an idea into something significant and bring fully composed music to fruition. It’s a beautiful gift to experience humans creating solely for the sake of art and connection. No ego, no motive, just undivided attention in making music.”
The album also revives Stevie Wonder’s “If It’s Magic,” featuring a simmering Glasper arrangement that the pair performed only once years ago, but never recorded. Its inclusion feels like a long-overdue moment—both a nod to their shared history and a striking continuation of Parlato’s signature reimagining, shaped by Glasper’s now unmistakable and instantly recognizable sound.
Navran and her Moonchild bandmate Max Bryk co-wrote “Already Gone” with Parlato, building on Bryk’s initial track. “Max and Amber provided an incredible harmonic groove for me to write a melody and lyric. As the song took shape, I found it necessary for me to make the lyrical statement about acceptance of relationships, circumstance and the parallel process of moving on. Someone’s absence can feel final, though we may still hang on or be affected very deeply. It’s a song of empowerment and letting go.”
Mark Guiliana—one of the most inventive and influential drummers of his generation— serves as the connective thread woven through every track on the album. A beloved and fearless re-imaginer of his instrument, Guiliana brings a rhythmic language that is at once grounded, elastic, and serenely radical. As with Alan Hampton, Guiliana has been a featured presence on Parlato’s past recordings and touring projects, but The Wise Ones marks the first time his contribution extends to the album’s core foundation. Here, his playing does more than support the music—it helps shape its architecture, guiding the sound, feel, and forward momentum of the entire project. His sensibility anchors the album with subtle authority, allowing space, texture, and groove to coexist with striking emotional clarity. “I’ve been a fan of Gretchen‘s music since before we even met and I have been lucky to see her evolution up close.” confesses Mark. “This album is undoubtedly her most personal and strongest statement yet. She somehow managed to look back and collect experiences and collaborators from the past and make a statement that feels very present while vividly looking forward.”
Regarded as a mentor and visionary, Meshell Ndegeocello has deep roots intertwined to the group, adding her voice and bass to “Never Come Down” written by Parlato, Guiliana, and Hampton. Guiliana met Ndegeocello in 2007 and began touring with her in 2008. She later co-produced his debut album, A Form of Truth. After hearing Hampton during a soundcheck for Arte TV in Paris, the legendary bassist - along with Pino Palladino -joined Gretchen’s quartet on stage for their final song. Parlato was introduced to Meshell through both musicians in 2009. “I was starstruck, flashing back to seeing her perform at The Roxy in Los Angeles in the 90’s. She’s legendary, yet she couldn’t be humbler and more inspiring. Meshell is pure magic and soul and simply being in her presence is a true masterclass. Whether I am listening, or on the rare occasions I’ve been lucky enough to sing with her, I get chills. My whole body feels calm and warm - like I’m both grounded and floating at the same time. We have endless gratitude for her artistry and energy on this track.”
“Never Come Down” builds upon Guiliana’s layered percussion, with lyrics that reflect an inner dialogue - balancing between motivation and discipline pushing back against fear and hopelessness. The track underscores the album theme of seeking balance and maintaining middle ground. That sense of steadiness is exemplified by a continuous three note bass line, expressed with the soulful nuance and singular touch that only Ndegeocello can bring.
In this way, The Wise Onesfeels both like a homecoming and a threshold. It is an album shaped by patience, trust, and a deep listening to time itself—one that honors the roots of Gretchen Parlato’s artistic voice while allowing new branches to reach outward with clarity and grace. “I have always been patient with my creativity, allowing the wave to come in due time,” Parlato reflects. “Looking back, I realize that everything has led to this. This moment used to be my future and will someday be my past. So, I want to hold it, suspend it, and make art of it.” With The Wise Ones, she does exactly that— capturing a rare moment of balance between reflection and possibility. The album stands as a pinnacle of decades of connection and growth, while opening the door to what comes next: “This album is a culmination,” she adds, “and also just the beginning of my next chapter.”
The acclaimed Social Science collective (Matthew Stevens, Aaron Parks, and Morgan Guerin), led by four-time GRAMMY Award-winning drummer, educator, and activist Terri Lyne Carrington, returns with a new record to follow up their 2019 GRAMMY-nominated debut, Waiting Game. Boasting an illustrious roll call of emcees, spoken word artists, and instrumentalists, Trip the Night Fantastic explores systemic and contemporary themes that demand the listener’s attention, call them to action, and add stunning breadth to the time-honored tradition of amalgamating art and activism.
Climate change, immigration, gender justice, women’s empowerment, community building, and animal rights are all elucidated with a freshness, depth, and creative brilliance that can only be birthed from a group whose creative core is rooted in empathy and humanity.
Speaking on the inspiration, Carrington shares, “We set out to make a dance album ― music to make you move. The title is wordplay derived from the phrase ‘Trip the Light Fantastic’ (from John Milton’s 1645 poem ‘L’Allegro’), which implies dancing agilely, and with fancy footwork. We flipped the word ‘light’ to ‘night’ to reference the darkness being faced in trying times. While the album may inspire dancing, more importantly, we hope it inspires more care for one another.”
“A friend once told me that if we want the liberated future we hope for, we have to make it feel irresistible,” adds pianist Aaron Parks. “We need to make radical reimagination feel so enticing, so electric, that why would you not want to go there? I think that’s one of the things Social Science does really well. This is protest music at its core in many ways, but it’s also very much for something rather than just being against it. Terri’s vision as a producer is meticulous and clear-eyed but always open to surprise, and the way this record was built collaboratively, with many songs composed together and then shaped and reassembled, resulted in something I’ve never quite heard before. I love these people, this band, and I’m very grateful to be part of it.”
Featured throughout this new recording are vocalists Ledisi, Arooj Aftab, Michael Mayo, Miki Howard, Fatoumata Diawara, Debo Ray, Christie Dashiell, Lizz Wright, Vuyo Sotashe, Safa, Imani Rousselle, and Ian Michael; instrumentalists Brandee Younger, Marc Ribot, Larry Goldings, Rashaan Carter, Simon Moullier, Riley G, and Brenda Navarrete; emcees Nappy Nina, Kokayi, Kassa Overall, and Khemist; and spoken word artists J. Ivy, aja monet, Tarriona ‘Tank’ Ball, and Moor Mother.
Large-scale collaboration has been a major hallmark of Carrington’s recording career since her groundbreaking 2012 GRAMMY Award-winning Mosaic Project. Between the first Social Science project and this one, Carrington released the GRAMMY Award-winning New Standards Vol. 1 and the GRAMMY-nominated We Insist 2025! with vocalist Christie Dashiell, reimagining Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s seminal 1960s civil rights project, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. “This felt like the right thing ― to collaborate and not just leave everything up to my own devices,” reveals Carrington. “I’m about collectivism versus individualism, and I always wanted to be in a band for this reason. There’s a beautiful Buddhist adage that sticks with me: ‘Many in body, one in spirit.’”
While touring with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens in 2014, Carrington recalls meaningful conversations with the two musicians that centered around social issues and feeling a great sense of alignment. “I just knew I wanted to do some kind of project with them. I thought it would be great to start with that foundation, not knowing at the time how much it would evolve. After Aaron and Matthew agreed, I suggested the addition of virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin.” Thus, Social Science’s nucleus was born, and their first project (culminating summer of 2020) was met with critical acclaim and a timeliness that to some felt uncanny.
Most of the current album’s material was written jointly by the four core band members, illustrating the band’s practice of collaboration. Carrington has maintained the role of primary lyricist, while welcoming contributions from band regulars Kokayi and Debo Ray. “It’s been an honor working with these extremely gifted musicians,” Carrington reflects. “Both Aaron and Matthew are part of the pantheon of great improvisers and stylists on their instruments, and Morgan is absolutely one of a kind. He not only produced the album with me, but plays 12 instruments on this project as well!”
As we pass the halfway mark of a decade that has been plagued by unavoidable truths about the gulf that separates the American dream and the American reality, the urgency of the moment becomes increasingly glaring. Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science meets the moment head-on, feeling a moral and creative obligation to engage with the pressing issues of our time. Through their thoughtful collective work, they create deeply affecting music that captivates and challenges their audience.
Ultimately, Trip the Night Fantastic is about community and hope. Not from a place of naivete, rather from within a space of introspection, compassion, activation, and community. “If we thought things would never get better, there’d be no hope or reason to work toward anything,” says Carrington. “Hopefully, people choose to do their part however they can, but what’s important is being empathetic and authentic. We set out to make something that can offer windows to imagining a future where the concern for society and humanity is prioritized."
The Devil I Knew is the seventh album from 2X GRAMMY-winning vocalist, pianist, and songwriter Nicole Zuraitis — a cinematic, five-part concept album exploring self-reckoning, accountability, and emotional agency through the lens of a collapsing love story. Blending jazz virtuosity with literary inspiration and deeply personal songwriting, the album unfolds across five thematic movements — The Mirror, The Martyr, The Malediction, The Reckoning, and The Requiem — each connected through poetry by iconic female writers including Dorothy Parker, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Francis Ellen Watkins Harper. Recorded at EastSide Sound in New York City and mastered by Bernie Grundman, the project features a world-class ensemble including Christian McBride, Gilad Hekselman, Donny McCaslin, and Larry Goldings, with horn arrangements by Jerry Hey and string arrangements by Vince Mendoza, including the Budapest Scoring Orchestra. Produced by Larry Klein and Zuraitis, with Executive Producer Susan Bloomberg, the album positions Zuraitis within a burgeoning New Romanticism in jazz — music that is lush, literary, emotionally expansive, and unapologetically human in an age that keeps asking us to be smaller, quieter, and easier to process.
As a recording artist, Nicole Zuraitis has released five albums as leader, and her sixth album, How Love Begins, co-produced with eight-time GRAMMY-winner Christian McBride, won BEST JAZZ VOCAL ALBUM at the 2024 GRAMMY® awards and features all original music. She is the only person ever to have won this award who wrote and arranged the entire album herself. In addition to leading her quartet, Nicole performed and recorded with the Birdland Big Band as the premier vocalist before taking off as a large ensemble leader of her own, co-producing the Dan Pugach Big Band and guesting for major big bands around the globe. She has headlined at Newport Jazz Festival, Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Caramoor, Saratoga Jazz Festival and Tanglewood, along with iconic NYC jazz clubs like Dizzy’s Club at Lincoln Center, Birdland, the Blue Note, the Carlyle, 54 Below and the late, great 55 Bar. She also has appeared as a featured soloist with the Savannah Philharmonic, Asheville Symphony, and Macon Pops as well as the Danish Radio Big Band.
Nicole is a featured artist and producer on her husband’s, renowned drummer, bandleader, and composer Dan Pugach, 2025 GRAMMY-winning album, Bianca Reimagined: Music for Paws and Persistence (Best Large Ensemble) for which they composed the GRAMMY-nominated song, “Little Fears” (Best Jazz Performance). Nicole is a vocalist on the GRAMMY-winning “Last Sunday in Plains: A Centennial Celebration” alongside Jon Batiste, Keb’ Mo’, and LeeAnn Rimes. In 2024, Broadway World honored Nicole with the “Best Big Band Show” Award and she’s a 2025 Rising Female Vocalist in Downbeat Magazine. Nicole's arrangement of Dolly Parton's Jolene, co-written with Dan Pugach, was nominated for a 2019 GRAMMY®, springboarding her career and making her a household name in the modern-day jazz landscape. In 2020, she was named in the top 40 under 40 for 2020 in Connecticut Magazine, and her weekly live stream during the Covid-19 crisis, "Virtual Piano Lounge," was featured in Forbes Magazine.
Nicole has collaborated with an extensive list of luminaries, including Christian McBride, Tom Scott, Keyon Harrold, David Cook, Gilad Hekselman, Veronica Swift, Benny Benack, Stephen Feifke, Cyrille Aimee, Antonio Sanchez, Javon Jackson, Nikki Giovanni, Dave Stryker, Omar Hakim, Rachel Z, Helen Sung, Melanie, Morgan James, Darren Criss, Livingston Taylor, Thana Alexa, Rachel Eckroth, Don Braden and Bernard Purdie. She is a proud educator and a current vocal faculty member at NYU and the Litchfield Jazz Camp. In 2024, Post University awarded Nicole an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters.
An ardent activist with a decade-long track record of giving back, her release of How Love Begins coincided with a self-produced music festival and day of activism for Save the Sound.Org. All proceeds of the GRAMMY winning album Bianca Reimagined go to pitbull rescues Nicole and Dan have fostered through the last 15 years.
Latin Grammy nominee Claudia Acuña returns with Ave de Luz, out July 10, 2026 via Delfin Records, a love letter to her Chilean roots and a bold declaration of identity from the acclaimed vocalist, composer, and bandleader who has spent three decades weaving South American music into the fabric of New York jazz.
Where her previous albums drew from the broader Latin American tradition, Ave de Luz goes deeper and more specific: this is Chilean jazz, with Chilean musicians, built around the rhythms, instruments, and songs that shaped Acuña from childhood. The title captures the spirit at the heart of the record, to be a bird of light, carrying one's origins forward through music and across borders.
Her New York ensemble includes Manu Koch on piano and keys, Pablo Vergara on piano, Carlos Henderson on bass, and Yayo Serka on drums and percussion — musicians whose deep knowledge of both jazz and Latin American music gives the band its distinctive footing. Andrés Pollak, who also co-produced the record with Acuña, contributes piano and organ. The Chilean thread runs through the album with Pablo Zárate on Chilean accordion and pandero, and Fredy Torralba on charango, trutruca, and zampoña, traditional and native instruments that root the record in a specific cultural landscape. Paulina García, a celebrated Chilean actress, contributes spoken word, and Daniel Kelley-Acuña adds vocals to one track.
The arrangements are sparse yet full, leaving generous space for Acuña's resonant voice to carry the stories at the center of each song. The band renders South American rhythms with authenticity and nuance, and the production reflects a modern sensibility without losing sight of the music's folk and traditional foundations. Across the track listing, the instrumentation shifts in density, the lyrics move between Spanish and English, and the mood travels from traditional folk themes to contemporary compositions, keeping the listening experience dynamic from start to finish.
Several songs hold particular weight. "Chingalacachingal" is among the most direct pieces Acuña has written, a song that speaks to exhausted hearts and the collective longing for peace and basic human dignity. "Viento del Sur" ("Wind from the South") reflects on belonging and displacement, the feeling of carrying one's homeland wherever life leads. "Piecesitos de Niño" is drawn from a poem by Gabriela Mistral, Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, and features a spoken word performance by Paulina García alongside a daring arrangement that Acuña calls one of her favorite risks on the record. A duet with charango stands as a quiet prayer to Pachamama, mother nature.
The album arrives as the culmination of a journey that began the moment Acuña left Chile for New York, carrying her roots into a new musical world, and spending years learning how those two things could speak to each other. Rather than a declaration of ownership, the album is an act of embrace: Acuña bringing her singular background, her specific corner of Chile, and her life as an immigrant musician to bear on the music she loves. What she describes as an ongoing love letter to Chile, Ave de Luz is the sound of an artist fully inhabiting who she is and where she comes from.
Ave de Luz is out July 10, 2026 via Delfin Records.
Musicians
Claudia Acuña - Vocals, Claps & Tormento
Manu Koch - Piano & Keys (Tracks 1, 2, 3, 5)
Pablo Vergara - Piano (Tracks 6 & 8)
Andrés Pollak - Piano (Track 7) | Organ (Track 1)
Carlos Henderson - Bass
Yayo Serka - Drums, Tormento, Hand Percussion
Pablo Zárate - Accordion & Chilean Pandero (Tracks 2)
Paulina García - Spoken Word (Track 6)
Daniel Kelley-Acuña - Vocals (Track 6)
Fredy Torralba - Charango, Trutruca & Zampoña
Latin Grammy Nominee and NPR Tiny Desk Concert artist (2023), Claudia Acuña was born in Santiago and raised in Concepción, Chile. She established herself on the Chilean jazz scene in her early 20s before arriving in New York City in 1995, where she quickly became a leading voice on a scene being transformed by a wave of brilliant Latin American musicians. Acuña is celebrated for her vision of blending South American folk music with jazz and world music, and has collaborated with Harry Whitaker, Arturo O'Farrill, Guillermo Klein, Branford Marsalis, George Benson, Kenny Barron, Louie Vega, Tom Harrell, Herbie Hancock, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and the San Carlo di Napoli Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Her albums as a bandleader — beginning with her debut Wind from the South on Verve Records, which made her the first Latin American vocalist signed to a major label — established her as a creative force. Other releases include Rhythm of Life (Verve), Luna (MaxJazz), In These Shoes (Zoho Music), En Este Momento (Marsalis Music), and Turning Pages, which earned a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Album in 2019. Recent work includes performances at the Newport Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall's Musical Explorers program, and International Jazz Day with the Herbie Hancock Institute. She has received the Keys to the City of Concepción, a 2024 Award of Recognition from the Chilean Chamber of Commerce in New York City, and a nomination for Person of the Year in Chile for her contributions to music and humanitarian work.
“Deirdre Cartwright is a deeply expressive guitarist who produces finely wrought, bluesy, soulful melodic lines.” Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise
Deirdre Cartwright returns with ORGANIK, her first album in 15 years – an uplifting recording that reflects on the guitarists who have shaped her musical journey while introducing new original material.
At the heart of the album is a dynamic organ trio featuring Pete Whittaker on Hammond organ and Gary Hammond on percussion. Whittaker draws on a rich hard-bop tradition, having worked with leading UK artists including Art Themen and John Etheridge, while Hammond adds colour and rhythmic depth, drawing on his experience performing with Nina Simone and The Beautiful South. Stripping the sound back to its essence, Cartwright plugs her Gibson guitar directly into a Fender amplifier, using no effects, resulting in is a warm, resonant tone, complemented by classic Hammond textures and inventive, atmospheric percussion.
ORGANIK opens with a fresh interpretation of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, inspired by Wes Montgomery, combining octave phrasing with a sensitive arrangement. Three new Cartwright compositions feature prominently: the lilting, 6/8 ‘One for Polly’, the Latin-tinged ‘Mango Bango’, inspired by her time at the Bequia Blues Festival and the funky, blues-infused ‘Espresso Martino’, a nod to Pat Martino.
A tribute to Emily Remler is heard in ‘Softly, as in a ‘Morning Sunrise’, while the trio explores a brooding take on ‘You Don’t Know Me’ in the spirit of Ray Charles. A dynamic ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ shifts between Latin and swing and a cinematic reimagining of Sultans of Swing evokes a desert-like landscape. The album closes with a haunting rendition of ‘The Gentle Rain’ by Luiz Bonfá.
“I made this album for me, wanting to move away from effects pedals and play without the distraction of technology,” reflects Cartwright. “Playing with Pete and Gary brought spontaneity, imagination and creativity to the whole process – I had a lot of fun making this record.”
