WNYC's New Sounds dedicates the entirety of its latest episode to "some of the exciting new music coming out of Chicago," including three albums released through partnership between the Chicago-born label International Anthem and Nonesuch Records: guitarist and composer Jeff Parker's Suite for Max Brown (2020) and Forfolks (2021) and composer, singer, and instrumental polymath Ben LaMar Gay's 2021 album Open Arms to Open Us. You can hear the episode here:

Jeff Parker’s solo guitar album Forfolks includes interpretations of Thelonious Monk's “Ugly Beauty” and the standard “My Ideal,” plus six original compositions: two earlier tunes, “Four Folks" and “La Jetée,” and four new loop-driven, stratiform works that marry melodic improvisation with electronic textures. "A beautifully freewheeling, guitar-driven expression of joy and musical exploration," says Guitar World, "a masterpiece of improvisation." "Beautiful, resonant, and focused," says the Quietus. "This matches anything he’s produced during his career so far." You can get it and hear it here.

Open Arms to Open Us lives up to NPR's claim that "there is no one universe for Ben LaMar Gay, he just sonic booms from one sound to another." On the album, recorded at International Anthem studios in Chicago, Gay interweaves jazz, blues, ballads, R&B, raga, new music, nursery rhyme, Tropicália, two-step, hip-hop, and beyond in his most colorful and communicable work yet, an expression of his signature omni-genre, "Pan-Americana" brew. You can get it and hear it here.

Both Jeff Parker and Ben LaMar Gay will perform at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, in late March. Parker then picks up the next leg of his tour with fellow guitarist Steve Gunn on the West Coast. He has just announced three East Coast dates with Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo in May, including at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York City. For all the latest, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.