BRANDEE YOUNGER TRIO

The harp seems to be making a remarkable rise in jazz. Think: Ukrainian harpist Alina Bzhezhinska and her HipHarpCollective (coming soon to AB!). But Brandee Younger is also one of those musicians reinventing harp music.

She has already collaborated with John Legend, The Roots, Lauryn Hill, Common, Pharoah Sanders, Ravi Coltrane as well as Ron Carter and Charlie Haden. Her track 'Hortense' was even featured in Beyoncé's Netflix documentary 'Homecoming'. She made history as the first black woman to be nominated for a Grammy Award in the 'Best Instrumental Composition' category too.

On her latest album 'Brand New Life' (on the legendary Impulse! label), she fully honours her great role model: harpiste Dorothy Ashby, whom she first heard on Stevie Wonder's 'Songs In The Key Of Life' and in sample form on Pete Rock & CL Smooth's 'Mecca and The Soulbrother'.

We're still impressed by her visit to the Brosella Festival last year. Live, definitely a revelation.

AJA MONET

Poet Aja Monet seems to stem directly from the African-American Black Arts Movement (see Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka, among others) of the 1960s-'70s. They were a major influence on music-driven spoken word artists of the 1970s. Think Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Poets and The Watts Prophets, jazzmen who in turn were a big inspiration for hip hop. Aja Monet thus mixes jazz with poetry with an urgent hip-hop feel on her album 'when the poems do what they do'.

The New York Times described her as 'a musical poet of love'. Jazzwise wrote: 'A vital new voice, then, and an inevitable 2023 'Best Of'.' And NPR: 'Gorgeously meditative and potently groovy.' Impossible not to be impressed by her ability.

LONNIE HOLLEY W/ MOURNING [A] BLKSTAR

Since the late’70s, Lonnie Holley has been devoting his time to improvisation in the form of art and music. His work – born of struggle, deprivation, of raging curiosity and necessity – manifests itself in drawings, paintings, sculptures, photography, performance, film and music. Everything is improvised on the spot, changes and evolves with every event, concert and recording.

‘Oh Me Oh My’, Holley’s sixth album, contains collaborations with Bon Iver, Michael Stipe (REM), Moor Mother, Sharon Van Etten and Rokia Koné. The album is both elegant and fierce at the same time. It describes both global and personal histories, it is an ode to perseverance, relentless hope and human endeavour. “The deeper we go, the more chances there are, for us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s.”