The album is a glorious hodgepodge of large-ensemble synchronicity and wah-wah-drenched blazes, with plenty of time devoted to featuring Hugh Ragin, a Chicago trumpeter like Bowie, whose rough and gleaming sound bespeaks a mix of pride and lament. His new album, “A Prayer for Lester Bowie,” pays tribute to the influential trumpeter and composer, a key member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, who shared Sanford’s proclivity for scrambling prefabricated formulas. 24 Sumerian) - HornĭAVID SANFORD BIG BAND The composer and academic David Sanford has spent his career exploring the ways big-band jazz and Western classical can feed off each other, with dashes of punk, ambient and experimental music thrown in too. Titled “Flux,” it lands somewhere between the sonic extremes of her previous work, marrying heavy distortion with sticky pop hooks. Poppy’s upcoming fourth album follows last year’s “I Disagree,” which earned her a Grammy nomination for best metal performance. In every role, her signature move is to unnerve, whether she’s demonstrating a makeup look for a funeral, singing about body culture or screaming atop thrashing guitars and hurtling hard-core drums. POPPY Since her ascent on YouTube several years ago, Poppy has ping-ponged from one identity to another: She’s styled herself as an internet satirist, a cyborgian pop star and, most recently, a nu-metal frontwoman. 24 Sony Music UK/RCA Records) - Jon Pareles
She’s joined by kindred jazzy-R&B songwriters on “And Then Life Was Beautiful,” including Lianne La Havas, serpentwithfeet and Lucky Daye. NAO With her gravity-defying soprano and lithe, darting melodies, the English songwriter Nao glides through songs about falling in and out of love, sounding buoyant even when she’s downhearted or uncertain. “We Famous,” Kondi Band’s second album, expands its global footprint with contributions from a third member, the London-based producer Will Horrocks. Boima’s subsequent remix of Sorie’s song “Without Money, No Family” paved the way for the pair’s ongoing collaboration as Kondi Band, named for Sorie’s 15-pin thumb piano, which lends an undulating backbone to glittering, electronic compositions that draw on West African traditions and contemporary dance music. and producer with roots in Kondi’s native Sierra Leone.
KONDI BAND This intercontinental, intergenerational group’s story began when a YouTube video of the street musician Sorie Kondi made its way to Chief Boima, an American D.J. If “Imaginary Visions,” her new album with the Danish Radio Big Band, feels like a master class in crisply executed contemporary big band jazz, it’s a class worth attending. For the upstart Japanese big-band composer Miho Hazama, whose arrangements thrive on big gestures, exuberance and bravado technique, that’s not a huge problem. These well-tooled orchestras can offer expert and faithful readings, though it’s often all too apparent that the bands don’t have a particularly lengthy or intimate relationship to the guest’s music. MIHO HAZAMA AND THE DANISH RADIO BIG BAND Top northern European big bands have long invited great composers and arrangers from abroad to collaborate on albums.
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