For those unaware, one of the most recognizable electric piano players of all time, Lonnie Liston Smith is a crucial figure in the ongoing pollination of jazz for over fifty years.

Having worked and performed with some of the genre’s biggest innovators, he is responsible for some of the genres’ major stylistic shifts and taking Jazz-Funk into exciting new directions.

His notable turns as sideman for heavyweights like Max Roach, Art Blakey, Gato Barbieri, Miles Davis & Rahsaan Roland Kirk, along with his output as a leader of his own group stand as some of the most creative keyboard work of all time.

He is revered by generations of musicians and continues to be a presence in shaping contemporary sounds.

Having begun the year with Phil Ranelin and Wendell Harrison’s Jazz Is Dead 16, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge’s label continues onward now with the release of Lonnie Liston Smith’s Jazz Is Dead 17.

1. Love Brings Happiness (feat. Loren Oden)
2. Dawn
3. Cosmic Dancers (feat. Loren Oden)
4. Gratitude
5. Love Can Be (feat. Loren Oden)
6. Fête
7. Kaleidoscope
8. What May Come
9. A New Spring (feat. Loren Oden)

This brand new Lonnie Liston Smith set, and one which is actually the great musician’s first of newly recorded material since 1998, opens on the soulfully exuberant Love Brings Happiness (featuring Loren Oden) and the veritably glistening Dawn, and then continues onward with the Marvin Gaye-esque Cosmic Dancers (again featuring Singer/Songwriter Oden), the simply beautiful Gratitude, and then we get the third of fourth collaborations here with Oden, the free flowing, elegantly-hued Love Can Be.

This soulfully smooth first new recording after twenty five years from Smith keeps on a-rolling with the cinematically, ’70s-infused Fête, which is itself backed seamlessly by the low slung melodies within Kaleidoscope, the album rounding out on the gentle jazz-pop-soul bounce of What May Come, closing on the final Oden-vocalized track of the set, the hauntingly flourishing A New Spring.

Dawn - Lonnie Liston Smith, Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad [Official Audio]

Official Pre-Order Purchase Link