The buoyant Lost and Found, out January 16, 2026 via Moondo Records, is Thompson’s first leader album in more than 10 years and his first since being forced to set aside the trumpet.
There came a point in May of 2022 when, after nearly five years of struggle, Vance Thompson realized that he’d have to set down his horn for good. The Grammy-nominated trumpeter and founder/director of the internationally acclaimed Knoxville Jazz Orchestra had been battling the effects of a neurological disorder called Focal Dystonia since late 2017, and it had become increasingly obvious that no amount of practice or physical therapy would be able to overcome the impairments that were compromising his ability to play his instrument.
Just when all seemed lost, Thompson found a new path that led him back to making music. On Lost and Found, his first album as a leader in over a decade, Thompson makes his re-debut – not as a veteran trumpet player, but as a newly minted vibraphonist.
He’d long been a fan of the vibraphone and counted artists such as Gary Burton, Stefon Harris and Milt Jackson among his favorite musicians. So, after struggling to come to terms with the devastating experience of losing his identity as a trumpeter, Thompson decided to give it a go. “It seemed like my skills as an improviser could theoretically transfer over, and it was an instrument that could be added to the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra that we didn’t have already,” he notes. “So I woke up one morning and decided to take it a day at a time and see what happens.”
Set for release on January 16, 2026 via Moondo Records, Lost and Found is the happy outcome of that experiment. The high-spirited, jauntily swinging set refuses to look back at what the bandleader left behind, instead joyously celebrating his new lease on musical life.
Featuring Thompson leading a quartet of longtime collaborators – pianist Taber Gable (Marcus & EJ Strickland, Braxton Cook), guitarist Steve Kovalcheck (Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra), bassist Tommy Sauter (Jason Marsalis, Cyrus Chestnut) and drummer Marcus Finnie (Kirk Whalum, Kurt Elling) – the album showcases Thompson’s compositional and improvisatory voice, picking up where he left off on Such Sweet Thunder, the 2015 release by his Five Plus Six ensemble. It’s the same voice, only on a completely different instrument.
“It was kind of amazing, but it didn’t take too long before I sounded like myself,” Thompson marvels. As he recalls, only two weeks elapsed from the day he borrowed a pair of mallets from a colleague at the University of Tennessee until he was calling friends to join him for informal jam sessions.
“It did take some adjustment – a wind instrument can do all kinds of things that you can’t do with vibraphone,” he continues. “But t,he same is true in the opposite direction: you can do things on a vibraphone that you can’t do on trumpet, like play multiple notes at the same time or play whole chords. The vibraphone makes a beautiful sound almost completely on its own and there are certain things that just feel natural to do once you start playing.”
During the time he was struggling – even working with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra became a painful reminder of what he’d lost – the one aspect of Thompson’s career that assuaged that pain was his teaching. No longer able to play in lessons, he devised new techniques to interact with students, and continued to evolve conceptually. That development, at least as much as the change in instruments, is what led him to record Lost and Found. “In a weird way, I felt like I had improved as a musician during the period where I wasn’t playing. Throughout that time, I thought, ‘If I could just play the trumpet, I think I’d be better than I was when I stopped playing.’ I feel freer as an improviser on the vibes than I ever remember feeling as a trumpet player, and I wanted to document my evolution as a musician.”
The album’s title track embodies the album’s bifurcated concept: Thompson had started writing the tune just prior to the onset of his Dystonia, then set it aside to focus on his recovery. He picked it up again as a vibraphonist. The piece seems to chart his path, from the tenuous pace of the introductory piano/vibes duet, through the gentle discovery as the full band enters into a bolder tempo under the piano solo.
The remainder of his six original tunes came from a variety of inspirations. The swaying, bossa-inspired “The Thread of All Sorrows” takes its title from a poignant poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, while the playful “Sleight of Hand” is a winking reference to an inside joke with his wife. Gable switches to Rhodes for the soulful groove of “The Ladies at Rose Cottage,” a dedication to Thompson’s daughters and their nickname for their family home. Building on harmonic ideas that Thompson had admired in Gable’s work, “Mixed Feelings” captures his emotions at his daughter’s wedding – happiness at the occasion with the bittersweet tinge of time’s relentless passage. The recording’s brisk vigor seems to weigh on the cheerier side of that balance.
In addition the repertoire includes a lovely rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” which begins with a shimmering showcase for Thompson’s delicate touch; a funky take on Chick Corea’s “Bud Powell” on which Thompson and Kovalcheck make for a quicksilver pairing on the slippery melody; and “My Three Suns,” a previously unrecorded piece contributed by former Jazz Messenger Donald Brown, a mentor and inspiration to the entire band. The contribution sees the band veering into a more fusion-inspired direction.
With Lost and Found, Thompson proves to be an inspiration in his own right – vibrantly demonstrating that even when all seems lost, there remains hope – in however unexpected a form – somewhere to be found.
photo: Colby McLemore
Vance Thompson
Vance Thompson is the founder, music director and arranger of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, a professional big band and nonprofit organization based in Tennessee. The KJO produces dozens of concerts annually and has performed internationally, released acclaimed recordings and collaborated with guests such as Monty Alexander, Hank Jones, Eric Reed, Michael Dease, Donald Brown, Carmen Bradford, Gregory Tardy, John Clayton, Stefon Harris and many others. Recent milestones include Thompson’s Grammy-nominated performance on trumpet with the Jerry Douglas Band, arranging for the 2023 Grammy-winning (Best Large Ensemble) Count Basie Orchestra album Basie Swings the Blues and celebrating 25 years as a professor of Jazz Trumpet at the University of Tennessee’s College of Music.
Vance Thompson – Lost and Found
Moondo Records – Catalog #: MDO-2212
Recorded August 13-14, 2024 at The Studio Nashville
Release date: January 16, 2026
Website: vancethompsonmusic.
Bandcamp: vancethompson.