Recommended music - other than classical and pop

Brand spanking new Coltrane album. Lost somehow for years. Well worth a spin.

On my top ten all time favorites list.

Sublime.

At the age of 65, Sting still has his mojo - as seen in an equal partnership with Shaggy on their recent album: 44/876. Listen to the track Sad Trombone for starters, but there are no fillers in the 16 track reggae album. Solid music making, and highly recommended.

Custódio Castelo

Jeff Goldblum, who's been playing a live set in LA for years, just released a very nice little live album. Decent band, but where it really shines is Jeff's ebullient personality and interaction with his guest singers.

In frequent recent play: Everything I Love, Sir Roland Hanna. Solo Jazz Piano of the highest quality both on performance and recording. Rarely has a piano sounded better outside of the real thing, the voicing on this album is that good.
I wonder where the Sir comes from - is it like Duke for Ellington? I doubt it is a UK knighthood, but if it was so, richly deserved!
Highly recommended for a quiet late evening over a drink.

Thanks for setting up this thread Kumar. Whilst 'lurking' as the say, in the background, I've investigated most of the recommendation s. In particular ' The astounding eyes of Rita' was a just wonderful discovery. One of those recordings you can just settle down with and lose yourself in the music.

Here's some favourites of mine:

Welcome to the Cruel World by Ben Harper and in particular the track 'Whipping Boy.

Hans Theesink - Johnny and the Devil. Standout track Mississippi.

Max Richter - Recomposed: The Four Seasons.

Dave Grisman - Tone Poems

Trio da Kali - Ladilakan

Phat Phunction - Real Life Hi Fidelity

Aziza Brahim - Soutak

Judy Henske - Judy Henske

And finally, possibly the most stunning of all:

The Fairfield Four - Wreckin' the House.

With the last one be warned that the editing of this live album is done with a butcher's axe! However the quality of the music and the atmosphere they achieve with the audience is extraordinary.

One final point regarding quality: I recently discovered that changing the volume level in Spotify settings to 'quiet' produces a far more dynamic and enjoyable output. Listening to 'Whipping Boy' for example at just off maximum volume on 2 X Play5 2 gen now gives playback the brutal crack and thwack on the drums that it was presumably engineered to produce.

Thanks for sharing, Zigzag2. I love seeing new updates in this thread too, always nice to get some new recommendations 🙂

Thanks for sharing, Zigzag2.
+1 to that; it is a lot of new music to be explored over the coming days, so thanks for that, I have Richter's new Vivaldi playing as I write this. And a combination of Sonos + Apple Music (in my case) makes it so easy to do this exploring - these are truly the best of times for home audio. For every abuse of social media and smart phones, there is this upside to the tech of today.

As to the Rita album, I find Brahem's La Pas Du Chat Noir album to be just as enjoyable. Mystic Jazz is a good description I read somewhere for it.