| Jazz |
A GUITAR LOOKING AT THE PRESENT
With So Delighted, her new album, Jocelyn Gould returns to one of jazz’s enduring configurations: guitar, Hammond B3 organ and drums. At first glance, the choice might suggest nostalgia, but Gould’s intentions are more contemporary than retrospective. She is reconnecting with a musical tradition that has shaped her playing while asking what that tradition can still mean today. The album brings together five original compositions and five standards, with contributions from saxophonist Christine Jensen, trumpeter Jonathan Challoner and guitarist Joey Landreth. Gould makes no secret of her influences, among them Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell and, above all, Jimmy Smith. “Many of my favorite guitar players got their start in organ groups,” she explains. That lineage is audible in the warmth of her tone, the precision of her attack and the direct conversation between guitar, organ and drums. Yet Gould is not attempting to recreate the sound of another era. The organ trio is a point of departure, not a destination, and throughout the album she gradually searches for ways to make the format speak in her own voice. That distinction matters. So Delighted is most engaging when Gould moves beyond the familiar vocabulary of the tradition and allows her own musical personality to emerge.
COMPOSITIONS AS A SPACE FOR FREEDOM
Gould is clearly at ease with the standards. Oscar Peterson’s “Cakewalk” establishes the album’s rhythmic character almost immediately, while “The Song Is You,” “Girl Talk” and Gerald Wilson’s “Teri” give the trio opportunities to explore different degrees of swing, dynamics and phrasing. The arrangements are assured, and Gould’s instrumental command is never in question. But to my ears, the five original compositions are where the album becomes considerably more revealing. On the standards, we hear a guitarist who understands the language and its history; in her own pieces, we begin to hear the composer behind the instrumentalist, and with her a musical world that is still taking shape. “Amethyst” embraces the classic organ-trio aesthetic, while “June Moon” opens a more reflective space, particularly through Christine Jensen’s tenor saxophone. Gould wrote the piece with Jensen’s musical universe in mind, and the connection feels natural rather than calculated. Jensen’s contribution is one of the album’s most distinctive elements, while Jonathan Challoner brings another important dimension to several of the original compositions, expanding the dialogue around Gould’s guitar without overwhelming it. To my ears, both musicians are among the album’s most rewarding discoveries, and their presence gives Gould’s writing additional depth and color. Drummer Fabio Ragnelli plays an equally important role in shaping the record’s rhythmic identity. On “Cleo’s Countdown,” his introduction creates a moment of uncertainty before the music settles into a minor blues, an effective example of how the trio can generate tension without relying on excess. Joey Landreth introduces yet another shift in perspective. On “Grin Seeker” and “The Game Changer,” his guitar and use of effects move the music toward roots and Americana territory, providing a welcome break from the historical expectations surrounding the organ trio. These collaborations are important because they prevent the album from becoming a simple exercise in revivalism. They give Gould space to move beyond the tradition she invokes and, more importantly, to test what her own compositions can do within and outside that framework.
A TRADITION THAT IS NOT FROZEN IN TIME
It would be easy to hear So Delighted as a return to a golden age of jazz guitar and organ, but that would miss what Gould is actually attempting. She does not seem interested in reconstructing the past so much as finding out what remains useful in it. Her influences are unmistakable, yet they function less as models to be copied than as musical material to be reworked. This becomes especially clear in the original compositions, where the presence of the great jazz guitarists can still be felt without dominating the music. Gould has the warmth, clarity and rhythmic authority associated with the tradition, but she also knows how to step away from virtuosity when the music calls for it. Gerald Wilson’s “Teri” provides perhaps the clearest example. Written for his late daughter, the piece carries an intimate emotional weight that Gould approaches with remarkable restraint. She reduces the density of her playing and gives the melody room to speak. It is a small but significant choice, because instrumental mastery is not simply a matter of how much one can play; it is also a matter of knowing when less will say more. That restraint creates one of the album’s most affecting contrasts with its more overtly virtuosic passages. Gould knows the conventions of the music she loves, but she is at her most convincing when she uses those conventions as a foundation for something personal rather than treating them as an end in themselves.
JOY AS A RESPONSE TO THE PRESENT
The title So Delighted also reveals something about the spirit of the project. “For this album, I wanted something joyful, I suppose … something that would make people feel good. I think we really need that these days,” Gould says. The record does not attempt to comment directly on the tensions of the present, and it certainly does not turn music into a political or social manifesto. But the desire to make music that offers pleasure and a sense of well-being inevitably takes on a particular resonance in the world we inhabit. Music can reflect its time not only through explicit statements, but through the kind of emotional space it creates. Gould’s answer is modest but clear: she offers a place to breathe. There is no claim here that music can resolve the pressures surrounding us. Instead, she places the emphasis on the pleasure of playing, on the chemistry between musicians and on the warmth of the sound itself. The same attitude informs her relationship with tradition. She looks backward without trying to live in the past, taking a format with deep historical roots and allowing it to become part of her present. That is perhaps the most convincing aspect of her approach. Gould does not need to declare herself a revolutionary, nor does she need to distance herself from the musicians who came before her. Her task is more subtle: to understand what she has inherited and determine what she can make of it.
AN ALBUM THAT FINDS ITS VOICE IN THE ORIGINALS
By the end of So Delighted, what remains is the portrait of a guitarist with a firm command of her instrument and an increasingly clear sense of where she wants to take it. The standards demonstrate Gould’s respect for a tradition she knows intimately, but the original compositions provide the deeper glimpse into her artistic identity. That distinction is important. Some of the covers can occasionally feel like beautifully executed encounters with a familiar language, while Gould’s own pieces suggest something less settled and therefore more interesting: a musician still defining the boundaries of her voice. The contributions of Christine Jensen and Jonathan Challoner are especially valuable because they broaden that voice without disrupting the album’s coherence, while Joey Landreth introduces another dimension through his roots-oriented guitar vocabulary. None of this suggests that Gould is trying to reinvent jazz, nor does the album need such a claim. Its ambition is quieter and, in some ways, more difficult: to remain connected to a tradition without becoming trapped by it. Gould knows where her music comes from. What matters now is what she chooses to do with that inheritance. So Delighted succeeds most fully when memory becomes a starting point rather than a destination, when the standards give way to compositions that sound increasingly like her own, and when virtuosity is balanced by the confidence to leave space around a melody. The joy she speaks of is therefore more than a mood. It becomes an artistic choice, a way of creating a moment of presence and connection without pretending to offer easy answers to a complicated world. In that balance between past and present, discipline and freedom, virtuosity and restraint, Jocelyn Gould begins to move beyond the role of an accomplished interpreter and toward something more personal: a guitarist learning how to make a long tradition look forward.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, September 30th, 2026
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Musicians :
Jocelyn Gould, guitar, arrangements and compositions (2, 3, 4, 10)
Ben Paterson (organ)
Fabio Ragnelli (drums
Christine Jensen (tenor saxophone)
Jonathan Challoner (trumpet
Joey Landreth (guitar)
Track Listing :
Cakewalk
Amethyst
June Moon
The Song Is You
Cleo’s Countdown
Girl Talk
Teri
Grin Seeker
The Sweetest Sounds
The Game Changer