For those unaware, Joy is a return to the acoustic piano setting following the groove-heavy electronic excursion of Amina Figarova’s previous album, Persistence.

The album reconvenes her regular collaborators: flutist (and husband) Bart Platteau, trumpeter/flugelhorn player Alex Pope Norris, saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and Rudy Royston and Brian Richburg Jr. sharing drum duties. Vocalist/songwriter Sasha Masakowski and percussionist Hasan Bakr make special guest appearances.

This meeting of old friends contributes greatly toward embodying the warm spirits that Figarova aimed for with the new album. Add to that mixture ten original songs that exude bright feelings and lyrical melodies, and it would be difficult to find a more apt descriptor than the one Figarova chose to christen the album.

While past albums have showcased her penchant for complex, interwoven layers - most memorably, her deft combination of jazz sextet and strings on 2019’s Road to the Sun - here she achieved music that is equally memorable while prioritizing emotion over complexity.

Joy serves as a reminder that each of the musicians are equally skilled at expressing vibrant passion and, trust me here, within moments of hearing Bakr’s shimmering percussion on the album-opening title track, if the corners of your mouth don’t start to edge upwards, turn the volume up!

1. Joy
2. October Phantasy
3. Green Blues
4. Morning Dew
5. Ruby at Play
6. Suddenly Stars Are Falling from the Sky
7. Road Ahead
8. Only Peace Liberates
9. Getting There
10. Muse

This quite beautifully crafted new album, complete with bold horn melodies galore, opens on the titular, and aptly-named Joy (music that also combines African rhythmic traditions with those of Figarova’s native Azerbaijan) and then seamlessly brings us the wistfully elegant October Phantasy (featuring the velvety tones of Sasha Masakowski), the upbeat and finger-snapping delights of Green Blues, the quieter, more pensive fare, at first, and then the sunny thawing comes within Morning Dew, and then we get the rambunctious Ruby at Play.

Up next is the pure, unadulterated gossamer of Suddenly Stars Are Falling from the Sky and the delightfully harmonious Road Ahead and they are in turn backed by the shrewdly crafted Only Peace Liberates, the album rounding out on the ecstatically exuberant Getting There and the pleasurable Muse.

“We all live in uncertainty”, Amina adds. “My message and my mission are to spread good energy and lift people’s spirits.”

Mission accomplished, Amina. Mission accomplished.

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