Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

 Internationally acclaimed composer, singer and pianist Patricia Barber is back with her first new recording in six years. Barber, who has won a Guggenheim fellowship in composition, once again brings thrilling original material into the jazz orbit on “Higher.” Featured is an art song cycle that can be performed by jazz vocalists and instrumentalists as well as classical singers. In 2015, Barber toured an early version of the cycle in concerts with Renee Fleming. In 2016 she took the cycle to Chicago’s Harris Theater to open the prestigious Ear Taxi New Music Festival. Working with her long-time jazz trio and guests, Barber juxtaposes the song cycle with some of her celebrated arrangements from the American songbook

     Brad Mehldau’s new CD, “Finding Gabriel,” comprises nine thematically related songs by the keyboardist inspired by his reading the Bible closely for the last several years. “The prophetic writing of Daniel and Hosea resonated in particular,” he explains,” as well as the wisdom literature of Job and Ecclesiastes, and the devotional words of Psalms. The Bible felt like a corollary and perhaps a guide to the present day—one long nightmare or a signpost leading to potential gnosis.” Guest musicians include Ambrose Akinmusire, Kurt Elling, Joel Frahm, Mark Guiliana, among others.

Also this week, Chicago organist Chris Foreman and drummer Greg Rockingham of Deep Blue Organ Trio fame debut their new Soul Message Band with “Soulful Days”;

Trumpeter Jacques Kuba Seguin, one of Montreal’s most adventurous musicians, offers up “Migrations,” a collection of compositions based on interviews with people from various cultural communities in Quebec, Canada; and Australian-born pianist.

Singer and composer Sarah McKenzie returns with her fifth release, “Secrets of My Heart.”