Join me at 9 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2024, for the next edition of After Hours on KRBD Rainbird Radio as I’m joined in conversation with jazz trumpet player Riley Mulherkar.

Riley has been recognized as a “smart young trumpet player” by The New York Times, praised by The Wall Street Journal as a “youngster to keep an eye on,” and is a 2020 recipient of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Artist Award for his work as “an original bandleader, composer, arranger, educator, community activist and advocate for jazz and the arts.”

Riley is best known as a founding member of The Westerlies, a New York-based brass quartet of (as the name implies) West Coast expats who play a mix of jazz, modern classical and folk compositions, high on tunefulness. This deep admiration for the American songbook can also be heard all over Riley, the solo debut by the 32 year-old Mulherkar.

But love of song is only half of the album’s primary pull. The other is the sonically modern setting for Mulherkar’s vulnerable, melodious interpretation of this rich tradition, a sound design shaped by producers Rafiq Bhatia and Chris Pattishall. Enveloping Mulherkar within a series of textured, intricately-crafted spaces, Bhatia and Pattishall train a cinematographer’s lens on the continuum of great old songs, as well as new Mulherkar pieces which fit right in. It’s a radically bold audio framework for the emotional pronouncements of Riley’s horn.

Click this link to go to Riley’s personal website.