"Twinkle Twinkle Little Me" is a relatively anecdotal song from Stevie Wonder's career, taken from his 1967 Christmas album, "Someday At Christmas". However, when sung by Samara Joy and accompanied by pianist Sullivan Fortner,  it transforms into a sublime work of exquisite delicacy. The 23-year-old jazz vocalist takes on the challenging task of a holiday record with the EP "A Joyful Holiday," which covers all the classics. Of course there’s the familiar "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", which Joy tackles with finesse and a shining technique, but there’s also a version of "Warm In December", first sung by Julie London in 1956. Revolving around the piano, double bass, and drums, the track is a sweet treat that signals the arrival of winter while avoiding all the usual clichés. Joy’s rendition skillfully weaves between all the holiday conventions while still meeting expectations, and pleasing crowds. The highlight of the EP comes as Samara Joy gathers everyone together for a magnificent "O Holy Night," sung with her family members, all raised in gospel. It's definitely worth the listen. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

Reaffirming that sometimes the only way out is through, Montreal native Allison Russell boldly confronts past traumas on the remarkable Outside Child, her debut release as a solo artist. A seasoned staple of the North American roots music scene, the singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist came up in the early 2000s as part of the eclectic Canadian band Po' Girl before teaming up with her husband, JT Nero, in the acclaimed folk duo Birds of Chicago. Now based in Nashville, she is also a member of Our Native Daughters, an all-female banjo-driven supergroup spearheaded by like-minded Renaissance woman Rhiannon Giddens. As a songwriter, Russell has been singing various forms of her truth for years, but on Outside Child, she candidly lays bare the fraught journey that transformed her from a sexually abused adolescent and teenage runaway to the fiercely creative force who found community and healing in music. Drifting seamlessly between English and French, she offers up paeans to the city that kept her safe after escaping her abusive stepfather and enabling mother at the age of 15. On the torchy "Montreal," she sings about sleeping rough in city parks, church pews, and cemeteries, each one a safer place than her own home. The lush blues of "Fourth Day Prayer," on which she devastatingly recalls her abuse, is also a meditation on forgiveness and empathy. On "The Runner," Russell recounts the moment music captured her heart outside a Vancouver music venue. Throughout her career, she has skirted the edges of various roots forms without painting herself into any one corner. That tastefulness manifests itself here in gorgeously layered arrangements that feel timeless and built to last. "Hy Brasil," another standout, pays homage to her Scottish-Canadian grandmother, whose taste for mythical and spiritual matters seems to have seeped into Russell's own consciousness. Its circular folk melody and witchy lyrics tap into an eerie undercurrent that occasionally reveals itself throughout the album. As a singer, Russell has a knack for playing around with different timbres to suit the song, and the abundance of crafty clarinet solos she delivers are an unexpected pleasure. As difficult and cathartic as the subject matter is, it's clear that she has come out on the other end and is not only thriving as an artist, but has found peace as a human. Having such a rich and compelling story to tell on a debut album is rare, and Russell delivers her tale with the utmost grace and finesse.© Timothy Monger /TiVo

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Me" is a relatively anecdotal song from Stevie Wonder's career, taken from his 1967 Christmas album, "Someday At Christmas". However, when sung by Samara Joy and accompanied by pianist Sullivan Fortner,  it transforms into a sublime work of exquisite delicacy. The 23-year-old jazz vocalist takes on the challenging task of a holiday record with the EP "A Joyful Holiday," which covers all the classics. Of course there’s the familiar "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", which Joy tackles with finesse and a shining technique, but there’s also a version of "Warm In December", first sung by Julie London in 1956. Revolving around the piano, double bass, and drums, the track is a sweet treat that signals the arrival of winter while avoiding all the usual clichés. Joy’s rendition skillfully weaves between all the holiday conventions while still meeting expectations, and pleasing crowds. The highlight of the EP comes as Samara Joy gathers everyone together for a magnificent "O Holy Night," sung with her family members, all raised in gospel. It's definitely worth the listen. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

Issued on Cadet in 1970, The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby is really a left-field offering for the jazz harpist. But being a jazz harpist was -- and remains -- an outside thing in the tradition. Her previous offerings on Prestige were pure, hard bop jazz with serious session players soloing all over them. She made recordings for Atlantic and Jazzland before landing at Chess in 1968 with Afro-Harping which began her partnership with arranger Richard Evans. Ashby became content as an iconoclast and was seemingly moving forward toward the deep well of spiritual jazz in the aftermath of John Coltrane's death and the recordings of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane. On this set for Cadet, she again teams with Evans who wears the hats of producer, arranger, and conductor of a string section and the record goes in a somewhat different direction. Whereas Afro-Harping hit on a direction for Ashby and cemented her relationship with Evans, Rubaiyat realizes that partnership in total. With a band that included a host of percussion instruments -- Stu Katz played vibes and kalimba, and Fred Katz played a second kalimba, Cash McCall was enlisted as guitarist, Cliff Davis played alto saxophone, and Lenny Druss played flute, oboe, bass flute, and piccolo. There is also a bass player and a drummer but they are not credited. For her part, Ashby played her harp, but she also brought the Japanese koto into the mix as well as her voice. Rubaiyat is no ordinary jazz vocal album. It is exotic, mysterious, laid-back, and full of gentle grooves and soul. The opening cut, "Myself When Young," with its glissando harp and koto, is in an Eastern mode, and immediately lays out Ashby's vocal as this beautiful throaty, clear instrument hovering around the low end of the mix. Midway through it kicks into soul-jazz groove without losing the Eastern mode and goes, however gently, into an insistent funky soul-jazz groove. There is no kitsch value in this music, it's serious, poetic, and utterly ingenious musically. It sounds like nothing else out there. And it only gets better from here. The poem that commences "For Some We Loved" gives way to a percussion and koto workout that comes right from the modal blues. The oboe playing is reminiscent of Yusef's Eastern Sounds but with more driving, hypnotic rhythm. "Wax and Wane" begins with kalimbas playing counterpoint rhythms and Ashby singing in Japanese scale signature, but soon hand percussion, strings, and a flute enter to make the thing groove and glide, ethereal, light, beautiful. "Drink" is a pure soul-jazz ballad with harp fills, a funky bassline, and shimmering flutes above a trap kit. The piano solo -- played by Evans, we can assume -- on "Wine," is a killer move bringing back the hard bop and giving way to a smoking vibes solo by Katz. It's as if each track, from "Joyful Grass and Grape," "Shadow Shapes," and "Heaven and Hell," enter from the world of exotica, from someplace so far outside jazz and western popular musics, and by virtue of Ashby's vocal and harp, are brought back inside, echoing the blues and jazz -- check out the koto solo on this cut, by way of the symbiotic communication between Evans and the musicians. You can literally hear that Ashby trusts Evans to deliver. Ashby transforms "Shadow Shapes" and "Heaven and Hell" from near show tunes in her contralto into swinging, shuffling jazz numbers. The lithe beauty on display in her voice and the in-the-pocket backup of the rhythm section is flawless and infectious. The set ends on its greatest cut, "The Moving Finger." Introduced by what seems like an Eastern Buddhist chant, it quickly slips into harp, koto, guitars, drums, and bass bump. Evans adds strings for drama playing repeating two-note vamps before Katz and his vibes take the thing into outer space. The slippery guitar groove and alto solo that cut right into the flesh of the blues turn it into a solid late-night groover with plenty, plenty soul. The fuzz guitar solo playing counterpoint with the kalimba rhythms is mindblowing, sending the record off to some different place in the listener's head. And this is a head record. Time and space are suspended and new dimensions open up for anyone willing to take this killer little set on and let it spill its magic into the mind canal through the ears. Depending on how much of a jazz purist you are will give you a side to debate the place of this set in Ashby's catalogue. For those who remain open, this may be her greatest moment on record.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Yeah, All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller is a tribute to the great stride pianist, but in Jason Moran's hands, it's not what one would expect. This album isn't full of stride piano, but it is full of Fats Waller's larger persona as a performer. Waller mixed jokes and comic routines, and did whatever he could to connect with his audience in his act, and if his piano playing was the hinge, it sat on a door that opened straight to the dancefloor. This album had its beginnings when Moran was commissioned by the N.Y.C. performing arts venue Harlem Stage Gatehouse to create a tribute to Waller as part of its Harlem Jazz Shrines series. Moran came up with a unique combination of piano, vocal jazz, and dance that used Waller's signature songs as springboards. Collaborating with singer Meshell Ndegeocello, wearing a large papier-mâché mask of Waller's head created for him by Haitian artist Didier Civil, and adding interpretive dancers, Moran called his conceptual tribute The Fats Waller Dance Party, and All Rise is the studio-recorded rendition of the project. It's a stunning mix of piano jazz with moody, winsome late-night vocals, and it has plenty of get-up-and-go when it's time for it. If it doesn't sound much like Waller, one could imagine Waller would love it, and his signature songs are well represented, including "Ain't Misbehavin'," which Ndegeocello sings with a wistfully sultry edge, "The Joint Is Jumpin'," which is just that, a joyous and yet graceful romp, and a ethereal take on "Ain't Nobody's Business," which in Moran and Ndegeocello's hands becomes a dark, moody, and elegantly defiant statement in modal jazz. This set manages to be reverent to Waller's original recordings, but since facsimile was never the goal, it also manages to create a completely new veneer for them, and the end result is a marvelous tribute that still retains its own shape and coherency.© Steve Leggett /TiVo

Carrie Underwood's first Christmas album is a stately, sober affair. Part of this is due to the pomp and circumstance Greg Wells -- a Grammy winner for his work on The Greatest Showman: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack -- lends to the production. Everything on My Gift proceeds at a steady pace, adorned with very few bells and whistles, a sparse choice that helps highlight how Underwood chooses to sing primarily religious-themed material. The exceptions to this rule are the John Stephens/Toby Gad number "Hallelujah," sung as a duet with John Legend, and the secular standard "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," selections that highlight how the other nine songs are more somber celebrations, including her new original "Let There Be Peace." Not all of it is tasteful -- having her young son Isaiah Fisher sing a bit of "The Little Drummer Boy" conjures memories of Clint Holmes' "Playground in My Mind" -- but enough of it is to make this a soundtrack for an understated, rather elegant holiday gathering.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Funkadelic's commercial peak occurred during the late '70s, when George Clinton and company issued several hit albums for the Warner Brothers label. And it's that era that serves as the basis for countless Funkadelic compilations, while the group's earlier, more hard rocking releases (for Westbound) receive not nearly the same attention. This is a shame, as this period is just as good (and arguably, even better) than Funkadelic's latter, more renowned work, as evidenced by the 16-track compilation Finest. It wasn't until a year or two after the death of legendary funk-rock trailblazer Jimi Hendrix that Funkadelic truly came into their own -- and deservingly, inherited Jimi's vacated funk-rock throne. Covering a five-year period (1970's Funkadelic through 1975's Let's Take It to the Stage), Finest may be the best-assembled Funkadelic collection from this period yet, as both renowned band standards share space with several oft-overlooked tracks, which make their debut on any compilation. The early tracks "I Got a Thing" and "I Wanna Know if It's Good to You" show the bandmembers still honing their eventual rich 'n' funky sound, before they hit their stride with selections from the classic Maggot Brain album. As a result, you get a healthy sampling of some of the best funk the '70s had to offer, including "Hit It and Quit It," "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks," "Loose Booty," "Cosmic Slop," "Red Hot Mama," and "Get Off Your Ass and Jam." The only disappointment is that a truncated version of the guitar showcase "Maggot Brain" is included, rather than the ten-plus-minute original version. Regardless, Finest is an exceptional sampler for those discovering the wild and wacky universe of Funkadelic.© Greg Prato /TiVo

Kelly Finnigan’s first Christmas album. After a splendid solo stint in 2019 with The Tales People Tell and five albums with the Monophonics, the son of organists Mike Finnigan, who played with greats like Etta James, Jimi Hendrix and Joe Cocker, has chosen to try his hand at the end of year festivities. A Joyful Sound is made up of original compositions in pure 70s soul tradition, a tradition Kelly and his soulful falsetto tried to avoid when he was younger. But the rap samples eventually pointed him in the right direction, towards greats like Curtis Mayfield, Nat King Cole and Marvin Gaye. In eleven concise tracks featuring wind, brass and glockenspiel instrumentals, the Californian performs some funk (Just One Kiss) and rhythm’n’blues with the help of some of the best musicians on the scene: Dap-Kings, Delvon Lamarr and Ghost Funk Orkestra. The album peaks with the languorous No Tim To Be Sad where Finnigan excels. A flawless soul gem, more than a simple Christmas album. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

Ana relies more on classical music than Ralph Towner's previous albums. While Towner isn't entirely successful in melding classical, jazz and new age -- he frequently meanders -- several sections of Ana are as lovely and hypnotic as anything else in his catalog.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Kerri Chandler hadn't released an album since Computer Games in 2008, so he’s gone to town on Spaces and Places, which contains 24 tracks. This album was recorded across four years in some of the best clubs in the world (where he’s been playing regularly since the early 90s). The American, who’s known for his sometimes painful sound checks, took particular care with the sound on this album (even mixing in Dolby Atmos by himself) and worked hand in hand with the sound engineer of each location he transformed into his recording studio. To play the name game, Chandler set up his keyboard and machines at Printworks in London (‘Never Thought’ featuring the singer Sunchilde), the Warehouse Project in Manchester (‘You Get Lost in It’ featuring Lady Linn) and Rex Club in Paris alongside DJ Deep. The shortest trip from his home in New Jersey took him to the Output club in Brooklyn, where he invited Bluey Robinson to lend his suave vocals to ‘Tenacity’. ‘Sunrise’ is an incredible track which illustrates an after-party at Berlin's Watergate. ‘The Calling’ was also recorded in Berlin, this time in Club Qu. These twenty-four tracks range from disco to techno and foreshadow a larger autobiographical project by Kerri Chandler that will be worth following closely. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz