The legendary Original Blues Brothers Band presents The Last Shade of Blue Before Black, their sixteenth release since their unlikely beginnings in the now-infamous Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi Saturday Night Live musical sketch. Taking on a life outside of late-night television, the band's rock and jazz-infused takes on blues standards synthesize NYC horn arrangements with gritty Memphis guitar stylings. The 14 song disc will include new originals well as classics songs with the following special guests: Eddie Floyd, Dr John, Joe Morton, Paul Shaffer, Joe Louis Walker, Tom "Bones" Malone, Matt "Guitar" Murphy. Birch Johnson, Baron Raymonde and David Spinozza.

Roland Kirk was arguably the most exciting soloist the jazz world has ever seen. Blind since childhood, Kirk developed a unique sensitivity to sound that he parlayed into all sorts of interesting ideas, most notably the ability to play two or three instruments simultaneously. For a while the vaudeville nature of this trick overshadowed his prodigious talents as a soloist. He was capable of great tenderness as well as bursts of aggressive lines and knew how to construct a solo better than many. This compilation captures his recordings from 1968-1974.

Originally released on 10-inch vinyl in 1955 under the title "Conte Candoli", this reissue from West Coast jazz trumpeter Conte Candoli shows a strong Miles Davis influence. The album is also notable for the performances of Candoli's session musicians, specifically tenor sax player Bill Holman.

The Kenny Werner Trio opens up a box of tasty musical surprises 18 years together, three consummate storytellers, pianist Kenny Werner, bassist Johannes Weidenmüller and drummer Ari Hoenig, create an incisive masterpiece of spontaneous discovery. With "Animal Crackers", Kenny Werner and his trio have created an intricate, passionate album that feeds the spirit as well as the senses.

After two exemplary ECM discs in the company of Andy Sheppard, Michel Benita has an album with his own group. The Ethics band is international, and the Algiers-born bassist leads a line-up comprised of a flugelhornist from Fribourg, Switzerland, a koto player from Tokyo, a guitarist from Drøbak, Norway, and a French drummer who once lived in Turkey as a member of the Istanbul Symphony. The group’s music, correspondingly, flows - like the glistening river of the title - beyond borders.

Produced by Quincy Jones, Dedication is the Jazz Village debut by piano prodigy Justin Kauflin. The album features twelve original compositions by Kauflin. His style embodies - without being derivative - the "quiet fire" lyricism of Bill Evans (whom Kauflin credits as his "biggest influence at age 14"), the nimble and mercurial qualities of Bud Powell, the genial melodiousness of Herbie Hancock and a bit of Dave Brubeck's gregarious percussiveness.

Chuck Owen's Florida-based and Grammy-nominated Jazz Surge is back in the saddle with another series of impressive musical portraits, Whispers on the Wind, whose genesis harkens back to Owen's childhood in windy Omaha, NE, and whose inspiration derives in part from the works of three contemporary authors: Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King (the last, as Owen writes, from King's Dark Tower series). To help cast the spell, Owen uses a number of instruments not generally associated with big-band jazz including violin, dobro, steel guitar, harmonica, accordion and hammered dulcimer (the last two played by Owen himself).

"Blues Full Circle" is the album from two-time Grammy nominee and multi Blues Music Award winning guitarist Duke Robillard, whose last album, "The Acoustic Blues & Roots of Duke Robillard", won Acoustic Album of the Year honors at the 37th Blues Music Awards in Memphis. Produced by Robillard and recorded at Lakewest Recording and Duke’s Mood Room, "Blues Full Circle" showcases his killer guitar tones in a small combo setting, which brings out the power and urgency of the songs.

Saxophonist John Coltrane was among the most important and most controversial figures in jazz, recognized as one of the great jazz artists of our time. Recorded June 22, 2007 by the virtuoso saxophonists Dave Liebman and Joe Lovano almost 40 years to the day after Coltrane’s death, this album brilliantly gives homage to the breadth of John Coltrane’s relatively short but momentous musical legacy, featuring pianist Phil Markowitz, bassist Ron McClure and drummer Billy Hart.

Neil Young's first two collaborations with Promise of the Real, the band led by Willie Nelson's son Lukas Nelson, sounded sorta like tethered Crazy Horse albums. But without the free-fall unpredictability of Young's most reliable backing group of the past five decades, 2015's "The Monsanto Years" and the following year's embellished live record, "Earth", came off like more structured attempts to capture Young at his most unhinged and plugged in. Their third record, "The Visitor", is more of the same, and like "The Monsanto Years" and last year's "Peace Trail", it's a political one, charged through a filter of recent news.

Live at the Thomas Ave Grill features another great collaboration between Chris Sigerson and Chris Gestrin live and fully improvised at a small venue…

Revel in Time is the third studio album by Arjen Anthony Lucassen's progressive metal project/supergroup Star One, released via Inside Out on 18 February 2022…

‘Utopian Tales’ offers strange yet beautiful soundscapes inspired by microtonality – the little gaps between the notes. Just as the rigid divisions of the well-tempered scale in Western music mirrored hierarchical structures in society at large, so microtonal music, which uses intervals smaller than a semi-tone, can be reflective of a freer and more fluid social order…