The full album release is on February 27, 2026 (just a couple days as of writing this post!). I'm super excited to share the music with all of you. Click this link to learn more about the album and see links to listen to the album on streaming, or to purchase a physical copy.

To end 2025 on a high note, I wanted to officially announce that my next Nebula Project album, The Longest Way Round, will be released in February 2026! I can’t wait to share this music! It will be my first album that is entirely my original compositions, including a three-part suite, and it features all the regular members of the band in addition to the amazing Gustavo Di Dalva and Brad Dutz on auxiliary percussion. You can read more about it on my website's dedicated page to the album. I'll also be updating this link with reviews, links to streaming and purchase and more.

The official release date is February 27, 2026. The day before, we'll be doing our CD release party at Smalls in New York City, and we have performances with the Nebula Project already on the schedule in Miami and Philadelphia in the next few months - check my schedule page for links. We're hoping to do a lot more with the Nebula Project in 2026-2027 so stay tuned for the latest!

Here's the first single from the album, which was released last week. Hope you enjoy!

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, I begin traveling again in August, with stops all over the US (West Coast, East Coast, South, Great Plains and Midwest), as well as in Bulgaria, Japan and Spain. Visit my schedule page for the most up-to-date information, and for links to purchase tickets. Thank you all so much for your support always! It means so much to me.

It's been a while since my last update post, but I'm happy to report that I've been as busy as I can ever remember! I recently updated my about page to reflect some recent developments, including a number of tours in 2023 and 2024 with one of my childhood heroes, Rickie Lee Jones! I've been very fortunate to join for concerts across the United States, as well as two tours in Europe and one tour in Australia. The photos below are from our performance at Prospect Park Bandshell in 2023 (courtesy of Vivian Wang, @lithophyte).

Click the about tab for more information about recent projects and performances, or follow me on Instagram @benrosenblummusic for highlights and future events. I've also recently added a shop to my website where you can purchase CDs and merchandise directly from me, and a partial list of the albums that I've played on under "discography." We've recorded the next Nebula Project album, so stay tuned for more information about the release in 2025.

I'm beyond honored that my most recent album with the Nebula Project, A Thousand Pebbles, was featured in Downbeat Magazine alongside an interview I did with the amazing Josef Woodard. Thank you so much to everyone involved with the project. We have some really exciting performances and recordings in the works, so I hope you'll continue to join us as we embark on this journey with the large ensemble! Click here to read the article on Downbeat's website.
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Click here to learn more about the album, see other reviews and find links to listen to and purchase the recording.

Click here to learn more about the album and read the press release, which includes a lot more detail about the inspiration behind the songs. The link above will also contain more information on how to purchase the album, both physically and digitally. A huge thanks goes out to everyone who was part of this album, especially my family who went above and beyond as always to help make this possible. Read below for the special thanks from the record.

​​Click the following links to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, or YouTube.

With the trio, I've also been getting back to a full-time touring schedule. We did multi-week tours in the South and West Coast in 2022, and I made it over to Europe late last year to do some playing as well. Over the summer, I'll be doing a Northeast US and Canada tour with the amazing singer Laura Anglade, and beginning in the Fall I have a number of tours in the works with both the trio and the sextet. I've also been fortunate to participate in some new groups as a sideman in the past year, including the incredible Ephrat Asherie and her dance company as well as Juno award-winning Indian vocalist Kiran Ahluwalia, in addition to the many beautiful groups I've been playing with for years. As always you can visit my schedule page for the latest updates on where I'll be when. And if you would like to receive an email once a month with the most recent news, feel free to visit my contact page to sign up for my newsletter.

The journey of this album is a long one - it started ten years ago in my last year of high school, when I completed the first larger ensemble version of one of the tracks on the album, Bright Above Us, and it includes compositions, arrangements and re-arrangements written across this whole span of time.  It is an album that merges my deep love of both jazz and world music styles, and features many of my favorite musicians in New York City.  This includes my long-time regular touring trio with Marty Jaffe on bass and Ben Zweig on drums, as well as the incredible Wayne Tucker on trumpet, Jasper Dutz on sax and bass clarinet and Rafael Rosa on guitar.  It also features special guest appearances by Jake Chapman on vibraphone, Sam Chess on trombone and fellow pianist Jeremy Corren performing on two of the tracks that I play accordion on.  Watching these musicians bring my music to life was such a special experience - after so many years waiting to record these compositions, I felt that I could finally express them in the way I imagined them.  Since then, I've been working with my brother Dev Avidon who recorded, mixed and mastered the whole project so incredibly beautifully and guided it through the entire process to completion, and my mom who took the gorgeous cover and back photos and imagined the art for the whole project.  I'm really proud of the work that went into this album, and I hope you'll all have a chance to listen to it soon!

If you want to hear a preview of the album, click on the link above.  I'm also including four Youtube videos taken by Kevin Jiang at our most recent live performance at the Kitano.  These videos feature many of the musicians that are on the album and two of the songs (Somewhere and Laughing on the Inside) that are on the album.  Thank you so much to everyone who has supported this project and I can't wait to share this music with all of you live.

I have continued a full touring schedule with my trio.  In addition to tours in the West Coast (June), Midwest (August and February) and Canada (October), we did our longest tour yet this past January and February, when we spent three and a half weeks touring in the Southern US.  There were so many incredible highlights from this trip, including a TV appearance in Jacksonville on the Morning Show at News4Jax (pictured above) and over twenty shows and three educational appearances throughout the area.  The picture below is from our appearance in Orlando, where we also got to work with students at UCF - thanks so much Sandy for the beautiful pictures from this performance!

I have also continued to work as a sideman with Curtis Lundy, Astrid Kuljanic, Gabriela Martina, Pat Bartley (whose YouTube channel J-Music Ensemble is starting to gain some significant publicity - I'm in the playlist linked, which features our acoustic renditions of video game music) and many others, and my travels have taken me to so many beautiful places around the world.  Over the summer, I spent three weeks in Croatia, Italy and Switzerland (the last of which I got to perform in as a leader with some wonderful local musicians).  While I was there I also took some time off to compose new material for the trio and the sextet, some of which we have been able to debut in our recent performances.  I also had the unique and amazing experience of subbing on accordion for the Off-Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, doing twenty performances between October to December.  Below are some pictures - the Colosseum in Pula, the church overlooking Lake Geneva, backstage at Fiddler, a performance with bagpipe in Cres, hiking in Quebec at Lake Gatineau, performing with Curtis Lundy in New Jersey, and finally at home in NYC, both at the Black Cat LES with Pat Barley and at Smalls.

I can't wait to share some music with all of you once the self-isolation is over and live music begins again.  Until then, stay well and I look forward to seeing you soon.  All the best!