Soundcheck

Singer Kiran Ahluwalia was born in India, grew up in Canada, and is largely based here in New York. Her music reflects her transcontinental upbringing, as she mixes the sounds of traditional South Asian song forms with Western rock and jazz. A two-time JUNO (Canadian Grammy) winner, Ahluwalia’s work has featured collab

Shabaka Hutchings, now Shabaka, has been a crucial and connected London-based musician for years, leading arena dance-jazz band Sons of Kemet, cosmic psych-dub-funk trio The Comet Is Coming, and the collaborative band Shabaka & the Ancestors. He began incorporating layered flutes on the last Sons of Kemet record Black

José James has often been called a “jazz singer for the hip hop generation,” having come to jazz through tracing hip hop samples and over the course of twelve records, he’s also incorporated R&B, soul, rock, funk, and Latin music into his songs. While he’s mostly sung his own music over the years, he has occasionally c

American indie rock-chamber collective, San Fermin, has been making lush, wide-angled Baroque-pop songs for more than a decade. The band was founded by Brooklyn-based keyboardist Ellis Ludwig Leone, who has multiple creative outlets as a songwriter, classical composer, and founding partner (with bandmate Allen Tate) of

France-based Cameroonian musician and composer Blick Bassy’s quiet and beautiful songs fall somewhere on the spectrum of R & B, pop, and folk, while the sounds of West and Central Africa have continued to resonate. His Bandcamp calls it "Africanity at the crossroads of soul, folk, and electro". Past albums by Bassy hav

Vocalist and songwriter Lizz Wright is usually referred to as a jazz or gospel singer, and she certainly does sing both of those styles. But she’s also comfortable with blues and R&B and the Great American Songbook. Her latest album is called Shadow, and it features striking versions of songs by Cole Porter, Sandy Denn