| Jazz |
Joe Elefante delivers an album that is at once steeped in tradition and infused with a vitality that feels anything but conventional.
That, in essence, is the spirit of a record born from a lifetime in music, the work of a composer, pianist, and saxophonist whose career has carried him across four continents, leading concerts of jazz and musical theater with equal command. Elefante’s résumé reads like a survey of modern American jazz culture: he founded the Joe Elefante Big Band in 2001, which served as the house orchestra of the much-loved Cecil’s Jazz Club for three years, appeared on ABC’s Nightline and in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Named a Jazz Ambassador by the Kennedy Center, he toured Eastern Europe and the Middle East on behalf of the U.S. State Department. His compositional voice was honed in the prestigious BMI Jazz Composers Workshop in New York and at the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program. And in parallel to his work on the bandstand, Elefante directed, staged, and performed in an array of theater productions, including appearances at the Paper Mill Playhouse and in Jersey Boys both on Broadway and in its national tour.
It is in 2024, after the loss of his wife to a long illness, that Elefante turns inward, toward composition as both solace and renewal. The resulting album is at once mystical and suffused with hope, drawing on Buddhist concepts of dharma as the fuel for its expressive energy. It feels like a chapter of his personal history rendered in sound, one shaped as much by grief as by the remarkable encounters of a decades-spanning career. Those influences manifest not only in his writing and arranging but in the company he keeps: a handpicked quintet of formidable players who channel the breadth and power his music demands.
In jazz, when seasoned musicians step forward from supporting roles to release their own projects, the results are often solid but not transformative. What distinguishes Elefante’s work here is a rare unity of vision, the deliberate management of instrumental voices, the interplay of solos, the balance between freedom and form. The record resists being pigeonholed as “classic,” for its theatrical DNA is unmistakable: like a seasoned director, Elefante shapes each passage with dramatic clarity, aware that music, much like theater, requires both a grasp of underlying text and the intuition to sense what serves the story best.
The pursuit of beauty in art is often spoken of but seldom practiced with such discipline. It demands a consciousness of both substance and structure, followed by the patient craft of staging and presentation. This is precisely what animates Elefante’s album.
The melodies themselves, though striking, are not the centerpiece; rather, it is the intentions behind them, the way each instrument is given room to articulate its purpose, the way silence and space carry equal weight. It is a record to be heard, then heard again, each listen revealing more of its architecture.
Equally striking is the production, polished with care yet never sterile, a reminder that Elefante’s commitment to beauty leaves nothing to chance. The sincerity of the project shines through with unusual clarity, making it an album that can speak to listeners across divides of genre and background. What he has created here feels not merely personal but universal, an offering that transforms private grief and lifelong artistry into something profoundly, enduringly human.
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, August 18th 2025
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Musicians:
Joe Elefante, piano, vocals
Freddie Hendrix, Trumpet and flugelhorn
Erena Terabuko, alto saxophone
Sameer Shankar, bass
David Heilman, drums
Tracklist:
Jazz for Dummies
Mudita
Return of the Light
Cromwell
Ankara Blues
Nobly Born
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
Simple Girl
Loving Kindness
Sore on the Floor
Some Other Blues