Hello Everyone! Friends, fans, listeners, students, trumpet folks, players: as we go into the third month of this year, I have resolved to put new, loving effort into connecting with you all. The support that you’ve given to my work, whether newly acquainted or as a long-time follower, means the world to me as I continue my long journey as a musical practitioner and artist.
As almost all of you know, I’ve long been an advocate of artistic self-determination by producing and disseminating my work myself, notably through starting Hollistic MusicWorks, the label I’ve used to put out my own albums and others’ work for over 15 years.
Even as the viability of producing high-quality recorded music gets more and more tenuous with the advent of music made for “study/chill” playlists, not to mention looming AI slop music, I remain committed to making, producing, and supporting real music, that is a statement of an individual vision within a tradition of cultural practices.
So all this is a preface to letting you know that a very important milestone just happened for me. Friday, March 6th, 2026 signaled the release of Torch Bearers, my latest project featuring one of my most revered mentors, the legendary alto saxophonist Charles McPherson. I’ve dreamed of making an album together with Maestro McPherson for many, many years, and I can say that Torch Bearers is everything I ever dreamed of accomplishing and more – one of my very best records with a fine representation of Charles’s mastery, adding up to a soul-satisfying document of a musical relationship dating back almost a half-century. Not to mention the brilliant cast of collaborators on board, including frequent recording cronies Orrin Evans, Boris Kozlov, Rob Schneiderman, and Kyle Swan; cameo appearances from Luis Perdomo and Ulysses Owens, and a special two tracks featuring the incandescent Samara Joy.
Read on to learn more…