Recorded in Hamburg, Zurich and Berlin, the album is a collaboration between Amuri and the Hamburg-based AmberYard production team as well as the songwriter, Walter Esposito. Born in Congo, Alina Amuri arrived in Switzerland at the age of two. She loved dancing even as a child, learnt to play the flute and joined the children’s choir of the Zurich Opera House. Later on, she became a sought-after backing vocalist, singing with outfits as diverse as Namusoke, afro-funkster Professor Wouassa, reggae group Kid Jango and the Scrucialists, and rapper Stereo Luchs. She also contributed some of her own tracks to a number of compilation albums before she recorded her full-length debut “Be One With Me” in 2015.

One of the most admired Lieder and concert singers of his generation, Bass-Baritone Thomas Quasthoff returns to the studio with his first solo album since 2010. Thomas Quasthoff is approaching standards such as Nice and Easy or Cry Me A River with new arrangements by Jörg Achim Keller. The results: exciting new versions of familiar jazz-classics. This release finds the singer partnering again with German trumpeter Till Brönner - featuring a solo and his Trio Partners Frank Chastenier, Dieter Ilg and Wolfgang Haffner as well as the unique NDR Bigband - The Hamburg Radio Jazz Orchestra.

Peter Pears: Balinese Ceremonial Music is nine songs written by Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman) and Nico Muhly plus three gamelan transcriptions by ethnomusicologist Colin McPhee, which inspired the new songs. Bartlett and Muhly play pianos and keyboards on the album, and Bartlett sings, joined by other musicians on strings and metallic pitched percussion. McPhee recorded a suite of Balinese ceremonial music with Benjamin Britten in 1941. Muhly says: "The project is named after Peter Pears, who was Britten's partner and also an observer and collaborator of a larger community of musicians, writers, and thinkers."

Dancing with the Beast, the new album from Gretchen Peters, puts female characters at the fore, from teenage girls to old women. And intentionally so. With the 2017 Women's March and the #MeToo Movement as bookends to her writing time, Peters knew that a feminist perspective would be the critical core of the record. She admits, "You can trace the feminist DNA in my songwriting back to 'Independence Day' and probably before. The thing that 2017 did is just put it front and center." Though Peters doesn't consider herself a political writer, she is politically minded and, therefore, knew she had to address the 2016 election and all that has happened since… but in her own way.

On Dave McMurray’s Blue Note-debut, Music is Life, the Detroit native delivers a cohesive program of modern jazz that bristles with unalloyed soul. Joined by longtime collaborators Ibrahim Jones (bass), Ron Otis and Jeff Canady (drums), Music Is Life consists of 7 originals along with covers of songs by fellow Detroiters – George Clinton’s funk anthem “Atomic Dog” and the White Stripes’ rock hit “Seven Nation Army.” McMurray’s cemented his reputation for versatility by playing with a vast array of musicians including B.B. King, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Gladys Knight, Herbie Hancock and more.

Settings of poetry and other literary texts form a special category in the discography of Norwegian pianist-composer Ketil Bjørnstads and A Suite of Poems, recorded at Oslos Rainbow Studio in June 2016, is a song cycle to put alongside such projects as A Passion for John Donne, Sunrise, and The Light.

Debut solo album from Theresa Wayman of Warpaint, addressing issues of motherhood, unconditional love, romance, loneliness & life as a touring musician. Includes 'Love Leaks' & 'Take One'.

1967 - what a wonderful year! It heralded the Summer of Love when hippies roamed the streets of London clad in kaftans and beads and Flower Power ruled. It was also a year of artistic development when the Yardbirds became an important part of the coming rock revolution.

Matthew Sweet had a head start for his new album, Tomorrow's Daughter, whose opening track and first single "I Belong to You" is premiering below. Sweet wrote and did most of the recording for the dozen songs on the set, which comes out May 18, while making last year's expansive Tomorrow Forever. "It's really, like, a deeper dive into the sessions that made Tomorrow Forever," the Nebraska-based Sweet tells Billboard. "At the time I was finalizing that record I took all of these other songs I really liked and made it into this album. I didn't know if I'd get to release it right away or what, but I just liked the way they fell together." Sweet likens the project to the 1994 EP Son Of Altered Beast but notes that "this is more of a real record. It's a whole 12 songs that seemed to hold together and be their own fresh thing."

Guitarist Marc Sinans third ECM release is an evocative duo album with clarinettist Oguz Buyukberber which subtly covers a lot of ground. The pair have worked together in many contexts since first meeting in Istanbul a decade ago, and Buyukberber previously appeared on Hasretim: Journey to Anatolia, released in 2013, as well as in Sinans music-theatre piece Komitas.

The album represents a turning point for the quartet as not just musicians, but friends as well. The last few years would prove simultaneously maddening, marvelous, and ultimately majestic for Family of the Year. Started by brothers Joe and Sebastian Keefe, the group made writing retreats to Mount Washington and Bear Valley Springs in order to craft the new music during 2016. However, pressure increased, communication eroded, a once defined creative identity became obscured, and Joe and Sebastian endured the passing of their mom. The turmoil led to a breakthrough for the bandmates. Reinvigorated and re-inspired, they rebuilt their friendships and finished writing and recording with a new creative clarity, going deeper than before.

One-of-a-kind guitarist and record-maker Steve Tibbetts has an association with ECM dating back to 1981, with his body of work reflecting that of an artist who follows his own winding, questing path. The BBC has described his music as "an atmospheric brew brilliant, individual".

Matt Costa knows it's been a minute five years, in fact since his last album. But he was hardly dormant during the interim leading up to Santa Rosa Fangs, whose first single, "I Remember It Well," is premiering exclusively below. Costa filled the time with a variety of projects, including scoring the film Orange Sunshine and releasing some independent EPs. "I spent some time developing some more aspects of my craft," Costa tells Billboard, "studying different styles and learning things writing techniques, literary techniques all of that just to make things more impactful. And then everything came together within the last year and a half or so."

The Italian guitarist and bandleader Nicola Conte has recorded his first album for the legendary, recently re-established MPS records. Conte has brought with him his cosmic-cosmopolitan ensemble of stars which includes trumpeter Theo Croker, saxophonists Logan Richardson and Magnus Lindgren, and singer Zara McFarlane. For the most part recorded in Bari, Italy and Johannesburg, South Africa, it is a sensitive work of art that crosses the border between soul and spiritual Afro-jazz

There was a time when Ray LaMontagne was viewed as the heir apparent to Van Morrison or Jeff Buckley. Part of the Light shakes up those assumptions as the New Hampshire singer/songwriter balances the quiet, loud, and ethereal. Ray’s voice ripples and expands like a pebble splash in a quiet lake, so the vocal echo on “It’s Always Been You” adds a haunting contrail. “As Black as Blood Is Blue” hints that LaMontagne has some Metallica cassettes stashed in his attic. Meanwhile, the ballads here are gorgeously lethal. “Let’s Make It Last” might be Ray’s best one yet, perfect for a wedding first dance. The track represents the album’s exquisite beauty and message: Slow down and appreciate what’s truly important.