With Echoes and Other Songs, Mike Stern has released his latest album today. It is a journey through the genres of jazz, flavoured with plenty of blues. According to the label, it deals with the loss of his long-time producer and keyboardist Jim Beard at the beginning of the year, the closure of his favourite bar and the long battles for and around his health. And for those who see it as their duty as fans to empathise with an artist's private life, this may be important, but for the majority of fans it is not.

The album features a who's who of jazz music: In addition to Mike Stern on guitar and backing vocals for TACK9, there are saxophonists Chris Potter and Bob Franceschini, pianist Jim Beard, bassists Christian McBride and Richard Bona, drummers Antonio Sanchez and Dennis Chambers, percussionist Arto Tunçboyacian and Leni Stern on the ngoni, a 4-stringed inland spit lute from West Africa.

Musically, Echoes and Other Songs is - as you would expect - a mix of rock, jazz and lots of blues. However, this is more of a foundation that is shifted by the other elements, especially the jazzy ones, into a different listening environment.

What is captivating about this shift, revaluation and re-evaluation is the enormous range over which Stern allows the genre mix to expand. It ranges from the rather funky-bluesy Stuff Happens to the fusion-influenced Echoes and the funk-rocky Space Bar to the vocal-flavoured Curtis, which integrates smooth jazz with vocal jazz and African elements.

Echoes and Other Songs is a love letter to jazz, to the guitar, to the camaraderie on stage and to his own unbroken will, writes the label about the album. What it doesn't write, perhaps because it thinks it can take it for granted, is that it is a fantastically musical album, which in its mix also offers discerning listeners pure sound as well as pure sounds.

A fine album in every respect. (Thomas Semmler, HighResMac)

Mike Stern, electric guitar (all tracks), backing vocals (track 9)
Chris Potter, tenor saxophone (all tracks except 4, 5, 9)
Jim Beard, acoustic piano (all tracks), keyboards
Christian McBride, electric bass (tracks 1, 2, 3, 6, 8), acoustic bass (tracks 7, 10, 11)
Antonio Sanchez, drums (all tracks except 4, 5, 9)
Leni Stern, ngoni (tracks 1, 5, 8)
Arto Tunçboyacian, percussion (all tracks except 6, 7)
Richard Bona, bass (tracks 4, 5, 9), vocals (tracks 5, 9)
Dennis Chambers, drums (tracks 4, 5, 9)
Bob Franceschini, soprano saxophone (track 5), tenor saxophone (tracks 4, 9)

Produced by Jim Beard