New Release Friday: what new this week?

This week’s additions to New Jazz & More run from a Chicago pianist’s steady drip of late-night singles to a Grammy winner’s jazz reading of grunge, a fully improvised Tallinn session, and a saxophonist ten weeks out from his debut album. Here’s what went on the playlist and why.

Greg Spero – After Hours

Greg Spero’s been putting out singles at a clip all year – blue hour monologue, pocket full of sparks, stride, copper, peak UV – and After Hours is the latest, a late-night, groove-first track with Noah Allen, Mattia Muller, Jack Kuelling and Joav Ganor. He closed out 2025 with two albums, Journeys and Ego or Soul?, then opened this year with POP-OLOGY. Rather than build toward another full-length, he’s treating each single as its own small statement. After Hours doesn’t try to do much beyond what its title promises, and that’s the appeal.

Alexander IV – Génie

Génie is the second track on Alchemist, the debut album from Dutch producer Joris Feiertag under the name Alexander IV, released in March. The record runs thirteen tracks and moves between hip-hop, soul, jazz and cinematic beat-making, with guest spots later on from Ursula Rucker, Pete Josef, Oli Hannaford and Cézanne. Génie arrives early and instrumental, before those collaborators show up, and it’s where Feiertag lays out what the album’s title is getting at – turning sampled and live material into something that sounds like neither on its own.

Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y – Disarm

Owens and his band Generation Y recorded Kind of Grunge in three days at Drumeo’s studios in Vancouver, working through a set of ’90s grunge songs with a jazz band’s instincts. Disarm is their version of the Smashing Pumpkins ballad, fourth on a tracklist that also takes on Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. Owens plays drums alongside Dan Wilson on guitar, Thomas Milovac on bass, Langston Hughes II on saxophone, Benny Benack III on trumpet and Tyler Bullock on piano, and most of it was cut live with barely any rehearsal. I like records that take a genre nobody expects jazz musicians to touch and go looking for what’s actually there – this is one of the better ones I’ve heard this year.

Muriel Grossmann / Tõnu Naissoo – Awakenings

Awakenings opens the self-titled album Muriel Grossmann made with Estonian pianist Tõnu Naissoo, recorded in a single day in Tallinn last November and released in June on NooPop Records. There were no charts and no arrangements worked out in advance – just Grossmann’s saxophone and flute over organ, Rhodes, Moog and guitar, built in real time. It’s the kind of spiritual jazz Grossmann has been refining for a decade now, patient and modal, in no hurry to resolve anything.

Hristijan Risteski – Summer

Risteski’s first single, Coming Home, was introspective; Summer, his second, is not. It’s built on what he calls a straight-eight Latin groove with a direct, catchy melody, cut at ArteSuono Studio in Italy with engineer Stefano Amerio. His quartet – bassist Hrvoje Kralj, pianist Marko Churnchetz and drummer Chris Smith – has been together about a year, and it shows in how easily the tune moves. Waters Dance, his debut album, is due in October, and if Summer is any indication, it’s worth the wait.

New Release Spotify Playlist

The Jazz In Europe New Release playlist features tracks from the new releases reviewed on Jazz In Europe. Updated weekly, it is the best place to discover music selected by our editors — not algorithms. Follow the playlist to keep up with the kind of records we believe deserve attention and to stay ahead of the curve.