Since we didn’t have a new in music last week, this is a supersized edition of New In Music This Week: March 27th. I’m covering both this week’s new recordings and those from last week.
It’s so big this week that I have four top picks:
JAZZ: ELEPHANT – Adam O’Farrill – Out of Your Heads Records
I’ve been listening to this album for two months now and feel like this is destined to be one of 2026’s finest albums.
Trumpeter/composer O’Farrill is joined here by Russell Holzman on drums, Yvonne Rogers on piano and Walter Stinson on bass. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a traditional trumpet-led quartet. They dance in and around multiple genres of music and in doing so redefine what a quartet can sound like.
You discover that right from the opening track, Curves and Convolutions. That’s followed by The Sea Triptych in which each of the three pieces couldn’t be more different yet still sound like a cohesive musical exploration of water.
All throughout this album O’Farrill proves why he is one of today’s truly great trumpeters and composers. Reading the liner notes for Elephant reveals a thoughtful and unique voice that is fully matched by the performances by all four musicians.
JAZZ: THE FLAME BENEATH THE SILENCE – Dave Adewumi – Giant Step Arts
You know have some serious chops when you can get drummer Marcus Gilmore, bassist Linda May Han Oh and vibraphonist Joel Ross to join you for a show at Brooklyn’s Ornithology. Then to have that performance recorded as your first record means you’ve crossed into some serious territory. (That is, of course, what Giant Step Arts does.)
Trumpeter Adewumi accomplishes that and more with The Flame Beneath the Silence. All ten tracks were composed by him. Not only are the tunes completely original, but they also have unique titles. My favorite amongst them is If I Need to Do This Again I’m Going To Throw a Fit which he doesn’t but makes sure you know the certainty of his statement through the piece.
Frankly, I’m so impressed with Adewumi and The Flame Beneath the Silence, I think I should just be silent and let you hear some music for yourself.
The flame that is Adewumi is going to burn brightly for decades to come. Don’t miss this album.
CLASSICAL/OPERA: IF MUSIC… – Jakub Józef Orliński – Erato
Countertenor Orliński performs songs and arias composed by Fux, Handel and Purcell on this utterly beautiful new album. Pianist Michal Biel accompanies Orliński beautifully (once again).
The real discovery for me on this album was Austrian composer Johann Joseph Fux’s Non t’amo per il ciel. I don’t recall having heard it before and I was transported by the sheer beauty of this song. Orliński’s singing throughout the album is transcendent, but this track moved me tremendously.
The album concludes with Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring performed by Biel as a piano solo. The choices throughout If Music… reflect an embrace of simplicity that allows each note to resonate profoundly.
This is an album I will be revisiting for quite some time. How I wish I had seen the performance.
JAZZ: LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD, VOL. 1 – IMMANUEL WILKINS QUARTET – Blue Note Records
Let me cut to the chase: this is easily going to be one of the best albums of 2026. And here’s the best part: there will be a volume two and a volume three released in April and May.
What makes this album so impressive is the way it showcases the brilliance of alto sax player/composer Wilkins. I’ve been following him since the release of Omega in 2020. The promise he showed on that initial album is more than realized with these live recordings.
I’ve had the privilege of listening to all three and jazz fans should immediately check out each album upon its release.
This first volume has four tracks: Warriors, Composition II, Charanam and Eternal. Warriors comes from Omega and the life these four musicians breathe into this track also showcases how much Wilkins has grown as a musician and bandleader. The intensity of that opening track is juxtaposed with the stillness of Composition II.
Alice Coltrane’s Charanam is the sole cover and the slow build of this performance is matched by the winding down that concludes this 18-minute performance.
My favorite track is Eternal which is the perfect conclusion to part one of this trio of releases. The improvisation is at its finest here and the piece covers the gamut of emotions requiring all four musicians to be completely in synch with one another and they are.
The members of Wilkins’ quartet are Kweku Sumbry on drums, Ryoma Takenaga on bass and Micah Thomas on piano.
Vol. 2 will be released on April 17th and Vol. 3 gets released on May 15th.
Here are the other fine recordings I’ve selected for New In Music This Week: March 27th
CLASSICAL: CHILD’S PLAY – Goldner String Quartet – Hyperion Records
This has been a time of discovery for me as you’ll see in this week’s New in Music. My discovery here is Australian composer Carl Vine. With Goldner String Quartet’s recording, I’ve started exploring more of his music because the chamber works here are contemplative, whimsical, fascinating and impressive.
Over two discs, six of the composer’s pieces are performed. Some are for just two musicians, others for quintet. They are Piano Quintet ‘Fantasia,’ Strutt Sonata for cello and piano, String Quintet, Piano Trio ‘The Village,” String Quartet No. 6 ‘Child’s Play,” and Harbour Reverie for string quartet.
Goldner String Quartet are Dimity Hall on violin, Irina Morozova on viola, Dene Olding on violin and Julian Smiles on cello. They are joined by Piers Lane on piano and Umberto Clerici for select tracks.
This is their final recording. What a great way to conclude their recording careers.
CLASSICAL: MANU SINISTRA – Illia Ovcharenko / MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra / Oksana Lyniv – PENTATONE
If you know what the title means of this impressive new recording, you’ll know that all of the works here were written for the left hand. What you may not know is that all three works were composed for pianist Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right arm in World War I.
The most performed work and best known is Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. Less known is Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and even lesser known is Sergei Bortkiewicz’s Piano Concerto No. 2.
It is the latter work that opens this album. Ovcharenko only discovered the work in 2023. Both the composer and the pianist were born in Ukraine. There’s a passion in his performance of this concerto this is undeniable. It is also quite a composition.
Manu Sinistra is more than a clever concept; it’s a terrific album.
CLASSICAL: PÁJAROS MÁGICOS – Los Angeles Philharmonic / Gustavo Dudamel – Platoon
This is the second “concept” album: the combination of ballet music centered around mythical birds.
The album opens with Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Uirapuru. The ballet was choreographed by Ricardo Nemanoff and had its premiere in 1935 in Argentina. The legend that inspired the ballet, and Villa-Lobos’s score, is about a bird that sings so beautifully that birds around it stop just to hear it. The work was started in 1917 and completed in 1934.
The other composition is Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite. It was first composed in 1909-1910 and was revised in 1919. Stravinsky composed this for Sergei Diaghilev and it is inspired by Russian fairy tales.
In this case, a prince gets a feather with magical powers from the firebird. This happens in a sorcerer’s forest. When the sorcerer gets wind of this, the prince is captured and must call on that feather to prompt the return of the firebird to help overcome the sorcerer’s power.
I’ve heard the LA Phil with Dudamel perform The Firebird and they remain one of the finest orchestras in the world. This recording further proves that. The performance of Uirapuru is also first-rate.
There’s plenty of magic to find in these two birds.
CLASSICAL: THE PETERHOUSE MASS & OTHER WORKS – Cinquecento – Hyperion Records
I wasn’t familiar with composer Christopher Tye, an English composer from the 1500s. This is my first exposure to his work.
Much of Tye’s work has been lost in whole or in part. What anchors this fine recording is The Peterhouse Mass which features the tenor part as reconstructed by Paul Doe. It’s a 23-and-a-half minute work that I found completely captivating.
I should acknowledge that these are deeply religious works and though I am an atheist, I found this mass deeply moving.
Other works on the album include Amavit eum Dominus, In pace and Miserere mei, Deus.
Cinquecento is a five-person male vocal ensemble: tenors Tore Tom Denys and Achim Schulz, bass Ulfried Staber, countertenor Terry Wey and baritone Tim Scott Whiteley.
CLASSICAL: THE RING: AN ORCHESTRAL ADVENTURE – Hong Kong Philharmonic / Tarmo Peltokoski – Deutsche Grammophon
The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned The Ring, an orchestral adventure from composer Henk de Vlieger. The work had its debut in 1992. He’s arranged many of Wagner’s works for orchestra.
Here the emphasis is on the four-operas that make up Wagner’s Ring Cycle: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Wagner’s powerful music from all four operas is arranged into, in this recording, an 88-minute work.
Peltokoski and the Hong Kong Philharmonic have recorded the longest version of The Ring: An Orchestral Adventure than I’ve previously encountered. They have 18 tracks versus the more commonly recorded 14 track version and one other 17 track.
But it’s the music that’s compelling here and even with some changes in Wagner’s original orchestrations, it’s a delightful recording to listen to.
CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL: EAST MEETS WEST – Anne-Sophie Mutter – Alpha Classics
Violinist Mutter is launching a series of new recordings centered on works written for her by contemporary composers.
This unique album begins with Aftab Darvishi’s Likoo which is a solo piece. Unsuk Chin’s Gran Cadenza was composed for two violins with Nancy Zhou joining Mutter. She expands things a bit more on the third piece: Jörg Widmann’s Studie über Beethoven (String Quartet No. 6). She is joined by Ye-Eun Choi on violin, Pablo Ferrández on cello and Muriel Razavi on viola. East Meets West concludes with Thomas Adés’s Air – Homage to Sibelius which finds Mutter as the soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra with the composer conducting.
All four works are interesting. Since Adés is one of my favorite composers, I’m a tad partial to Air – Homage to Sibelius.
Mutter plays, as usual, brilliantly throughout the album. This is a great launch of her ASM Forte Forward project and I look forward to further releases.
GENRE DEFYING: WHEN THE CAGED BIRD SINGS – Multiple Artists / Nkeiru Okoye – Naxos
This is a world premiere of an oratorio by Okoye inspired by Maya Angelou’s classic poem, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The work crosses a multitude of genres including classical music, gospel, jazz and musicals.
Okoye has centered this work around Cerise, a young Black woman who faces both prejudice and peer pressure in trying to navigate her way through high school.
It’s a large-scale work that calls for a narrator (Rita Coburn), soprano Angela Brown, pianist Cyrus Chestnut, mezzo-soprano Christie Dashiell (as Cerise), tenor Issachah Savage and baritone Jubilant Sykes. There are additional soloists, Exigence, three choirs from the University of Michigan and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra (led by Kenneth Kiesler.)
This is a hugely entertaining and engrossing work. The music and text are so alive that I could visualize the entire piece just by listening to this recording.
On a sad note, this was the last recording Sykes made before his murder last December.
JAZZ: ELLA – April Varner – Cellar Music Group
Vocalist Varner won the 2023 International Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would be inspired to record many of the songs Fitzgerald sang so well.
It’s wonderful to report that Varner makes every song her own. Real credit should go to arranger/pianist Emmet Cohen and big band arranger/trumpeter Brian Lynch for helping Varner realize her vision.
Amongst the songs she performs are A-Tisket, A-Tasket, Dream a Litlte Dream of Me, Cheek to Cheek and Fly Me to the Moon.
My favorite tracks are Mr. Paganini, Night and Day and Undecided.
In addition to Cohen and Lynch, Varner is backed by Yasushi Nakamura on bass, Ulysses Owens Jr. on drums (he also produces), with the big band musicians being trumpeter Michael Cruse, saxophonists Mark Gross and Cleave Guyton, pianist William Hill III, trombonists Jacob Melsha and Jeffrey Miller and trumpeter Nathaniel Williford.
JAZZ: JOYFUL FOUNDATION: THE MUSIC OF JUSTIN COPELAND – Entre Amigos – Entre Amigos Records
The discoveries continue with this album anchored by the music of trumpeter/composer Justin Copeland – a composer with whom I wasn’t familiar.
The title of this album is well-served by the first track: Ride. It is truly joyful and lays the foundation for the music that follows. Not all the music is Copeland’s. The various members of Entre Amigos also contributed songs here.
Those members are Gustavo Cortiñas on drums, Hana Fujisaki on piano, Kitt Lyles on bass and Roy McGrath on tenor sax.
Not all the songs joyous – that would be a one-note album. But they are memorable and this album goes by so quickly.
I love the mission of Entre Amigos – to work with and perform music by their friends.
JAZZ: MEMENTO – Marilyn Crispell / Anders Jormin – ECM Records
This is contemplative jazz at its finest. Pianist Crispell and bassist Jormin have written and perform music of such quiet simplicity that I felt my breathing and my heart rate slow down to an almost resting state. I mean that as a compliment.
This meditative album is focused on memory and loss. As Crispell says in the press release, “The music takes you where you need to go.”
Where I went with Memento was to a place of solitude in the best possible way. Their playing is so delicate. The best way to enjoy this album is to sit alone, quietly, and let it wash over you.
MUSICALS/VOCALS: THE WIZARD AND I: LIZ CALLAWAY SINGS STEPHEN SCHWARTZ – Liz Callaway – Working Girl Records
Broadway’s Callaway celebrates the music of Stephen Schwartz on this wildly entertaining album.
Amongst her Broadway credits are Merrily We Roll Along (original production); Baby (for which she received a Tony Award nomination); Miss Saigon, Cats and The Look of Love.
Schwartz, of course, is the composer and lyricist of Godspell, Pippin, The Baker’s Wife, Children of Eden, Wicked and The Queen of Versailles.
This live recording comes from her performances at 54 Below in New York. Fans of either Callaway or Schwartz will thoroughly enjoy hearing her sing such songs as Corner of the Sky, Bless the Lord, I’m Not That Girl, Defying Gravity and my personal favorite song of his, Meadowlark.
OPERA: PUCCINI HEROINES – Sondra Radvanovsky / Lyric Opera of Chicago / Enrique Mazzola – PENTATONE
This is a live recording of a concert Radvanovsky gave at Lyric Opera last February. As the title suggests, it is centered around the heroines of Puccini’s operas.
Radvanovsky is not the first soprano to release an album entitled Puccini Heroines (both Leontyne Price and Kiri Te Kanawa have done so), but she is probably the only one to have done it live and covering so much material in a single concert.
The audience clearly loves Radvanovsky and what she does with this material. I thoroughly enjoyed it – even in moments that seemed to be not as natural a fit for her present-day voice.
Nonetheless, she passionately sings these arias. To perform all of them in a single concert is quite the undertaking. I so admire her chutzpah and will enjoy this album for quite some time.
That’s all for New In Music This Week: March 27th.
Enjoy your week! Enjoy the music.
Main Photo: Part of the album art for Live at the Village Vanguard Vol. 1 (Courtesy Blue Note Records)