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To our customers and marketing partners:

I hope this note finds you healthy and able to keep your spirits up in these trying times. For music fans like you and me, revisiting our favorite albums, songs and artists reminds us of music's role as a primary comforter or source of inspiration when the world seems to tilt off its axis.

Review: Saxman Jimmy Greene’s album is spirited, spiritual

Jimmy Greene, “While Looking Up” (Mack Avenue)

Change is a constant on jazz saxman Jimmy Greene’s new album, “While Looking Up.” The 68-minute set flies by because of the way he varies the performing cast and mood.

Greene’s daughter was a Sandy Hook shooting victim, and the album title refers to the direction he looks for peace and strength. He conveys plenty of both with playing that’s by turns lyrical, soulful, spirited and spiritual.

Raul Midón: The Mirror

Eleven studio albums into his career, Raul Midón has fashioned a singular approach; his voice and guitar are instantly identifiable. But more important, his music comes with a guarantee—put on a tune, any tune, and the warmth of it will embrace you, no questions asked. When Midón, in the jaunty, lyrical, samba-esque opening track, declares, “I Love the Afternoon” (which features a background vocal by Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel), there isn’t a hidden agenda—what he means is that he loves the afternoon, and his words explain why; if you’ve not considered it recently, then he’ll have you realizing soon enough that you do too. That isn’t to suggest that there’s a lightweight quality to the songs on The Mirror (or any of Midón’s previous efforts), only that the feel-good qualities he exudes are natural and real. “Deep Dry Ocean”—which features and was co-written by the superb pianist Gerald Clayton—is spare and bucolic, lilting rhapsodically, the verses framed by a tidily executed Midón acoustic guitar solo that manages, in under a minute, to exude the soul of his playing. A pair of spoken-word tracks add another dimension—“If I Could See,” yes, is the work of a blind man, but its sentiments are universal. And “One Day Without War” is another vibe entirely, but maybe not—it’s a musing on an ideal state that this planet may or may not ever experience. Without a hint of stridency, Midón wonders if that can ever be and maybe, just for a minute or two, he’ll make you wonder too.

New York Times Playlist (February 7th)

The esteemed bassist Christian McBride was born just after the close of the Civil Rights Movement, so he remembers learning about its heroes by flipping through the copies of his grandmother’s copies of Ebony and Jet magazines from the 1950s and ’60s. For many years he has worked on “The Movement Revisited,” a musical suite celebrating four figures from those pages who inspired him as a child: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali. The suite, finally released as an album Friday, mixes hard-nosed small-group playing, soaring big-band orchestration, spoken readings from figures like Sonia Sanchez and Wendell Pierce, and choral singing. On “Sister Rosa,” the piece dedicated to Parks, a big band and a choir both savor the deep, mid-tempo swing feel, leaning on McBride’s bass for support as the voices unite in a long, weary drawl, quoting Parks: “I’m tired.” RUSSONELLO