On her third straight-ahead jazz album in the last six years, and second for Jazzheads, flutist Andrea Brachfeld is backed by her exceptional and simpatico working band Insight, with bassist Harvie S, drummer Jason Tiemann, and pianist Bill O’Connell, an invaluable longtime collaborator who along with Brachfeld, produced and arranged the CD. It features primarily originals by Brachfeld and O’ Connell, five of them written under a grant from Chamber Music America and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The album’s closing track, her rendition of the beloved “Amazing Grace,” is the sole non-original.
Brachfeld is highly esteemed as a flutist, bandleader, and composer, and this new recording is sure to find a warm welcome at jazz radio as well as with the jazz press. Continuing the momentum of her previous Jazzheads release, which earned a 4-star review in Down Beat, a publicity campaign is planned to highlight Brachfeld’s recent forays back to her original love—be bop—after many years of recording and performing Latin music to great acclaim. This soulful album makes the case that she is deeply connected to that first love.