Birdwatcher

Singer Liam: Finish Him [CD]

Gadadu: Outer Song [CD]

Young Mothers: Better If You Let It [CD]

Matt's latest album, 'Buoy' (Gradient Music, February 2025) is a solo project of patterns and ambiance for synthesizers and violin. It is his first primarily electronic album and first entirely solo album on which he plays a variety of analog synthesizers (modular and fixed), violin, piano and bass guitar, and manipulates it all in his computer. This project grew out of a performance in Brooklyn in 2020 on a concert curated by Laurie Anderson and Arto Lindsay.

Micah Thomas' fifth album Lucid - featuring alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, trombonist Kalia Vandever, bassist Thomas Morgan, and drummer Lesley Mok - is, in large part, a pursuit of the feeling of balance. The phrases in his playing and writing here are dynamic in motion yet concise - not too long in any direction, just hanging in space perfectly. This album is also an exploration of the feeling of ecosystem and habitat - the idea that things are happening that seem independent and maybe even random, but that also give life to the things that are happening around them and form a unified picture despite the complete autonomy of all the parts. Everyone in this band has an acute awareness of where they are and where everyone else is, and the agility to go wherever they need to go when they need to. The seeming surface independence of the band belies a tight interconnectivity.

Burton Green Trio: Peace Beyond Conflict [CD]

Following the vivid electronic experiments of her debut record Fullmoon (Relative Pitch), voted #2 for Best Records of 2018 by Jazz Right Now and hailed as "spellbinding" (NPR), Steph Richards follows up with Take The Neon Lights (birdwatcher Records). Conceived as a lyric poem to New York City, her compositions are an arresting exploration of spontaneous prose, woven with grit and brilliance. Titles are named from poems that similarly evoke the city by literary icons Maya Angelou, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg with the title track of set to Langston Hughes' JukeBox Love Song. Richards leads an acoustic quartet that oscillates between dense complex structures and expansively vulnerable improvisations. Featuring pianist James Carney, bassist Sam Minaie and drummer Andrew Munsey Take The Neon Lights reflects the ugly beauty of the city for which it is dedicated to.