Resonance Records and the brilliant producer Zev Feldman will release four never-before-
Joe Henderson – Consonance Live at the Jazz Showcase
Ahmad Jamal – At The Jazz Showcase Live in Chicago
Yusef Lateef – Alight Upon The Lake Live at the Jazz Showcase
Mal Waldron – Stardust & Starlight At The Jazz Showcase
All were recorded at the legendary Chicago club Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase and are the first in an ongoing series of albums from the Segal archives, all produced with the deep care and quality that Feldman has become known for. Six days later, on April 24, which would have been Segal’s 100th birthday, all of these albums will be available on CD.
JOE HENDERSON – CONSONANCE: LIVE AT THE JAZZ SHOWCASE, Resonance’s First Release from Joe Segal’s Extensive Archives Captures a Master at Full Stretch
Joe Henderson – Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase 3-LP set featuring saxophone titan Joe Henderson and his quartet with pianist Joanne Brackeen, bassist Steve Rodby and drummer Danny Spencer, captured in February of 1978, with liners by John Koenig, reflections by musicians on the album, plus Joe’s son Wayne Segal.
Available Exclusively for Record Store Day on April 18, 2026
Some nights don’t just fade away after the last note has dissipated. They linger in the marrow, waiting for the right moment to be heard again. Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase is one of those nights. Recorded in February of 1978 at Joe Segal’s storied Jazz Showcase in Chicago, this newly unearthed performance captures saxophone titan Joe Henderson in bracing communion with a quartet that knew how to listen as hard as it played. Nearly five decades later, the music arrives as a revelation. It feels alive, active, and fiercely contemporary.
This limited-edition, 180-gram 3-LP set marks Resonance’s first-ever release from the Jazz Showcase archives, inaugurating a new chapter in producer Zev Feldman’s archival mission.
“Joe’s archives comprise one of the greatest libraries of previously unissued jazz recordings in existence and we’re very lucky that these documents were made and preserved,” says Feldman, who first discovered the treasure trove of recordings when he was introduced to Segal in 2011. The vinyl will be available for Record Store Day, April 18, 2026 with a 2-CD set to follow on April 24, what would have been Joe Segal’s 100th birthday.
Mastered from the original tapes by George Klabin and John Koenig, with lacquers cut by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab in Salina, Kansas, and pressed at Quebec’s boutique audiophile plant Le Vinylist, Consonance brings Henderson’s sound into the room with startling presence.
By 1978, Henderson had long since secured his place in the pantheon of jazz royalty. But categorizing him by era misses the point. His greatness wasn’t static, and he had the rare ability to be of his time without being trapped by it, to absorb the currents around him and redirect them through a singular voice. On Consonance, Henderson stands at a crossroads — post-bop wisdom in one hand, a restless future in the other — testing the strength of melody and rhythm in real time.
The quartet is essential to that alchemy. Pianist Joanne Brackeen brings a crystalline intelligence to the music, her lines darting and doubling back with a logic that’s as emotional as it is analytical. Bassist Steve Rodby — years before his work with Pat Metheny would bring him wider acclaim — anchors the band with a deep, elastic pulse. Drummer Danny Spencer rounds out the group with propulsion and nuance, never crowding the space Henderson leaves open, but never letting it cool either. Together, they form a unit that thrives on risk, the kind of ensemble that understands the weight of the music.
Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase, the setting for this encounter, was no mere backdrop. It was a proving ground and a listening room where seriousness was a prerequisite and flash alone wouldn’t save you. Segal, a tireless advocate for the music, built a sanctuary for artists to stretch out and work through ideas in front of an audience that knew how to hold silence. The room’s intimacy sharpened the exchange between band and crowd, a feedback loop of concentration and release that’s palpable on tape.
Consonance is the sound of Henderson responding to that environment — probing, pressing, then laying back just enough to let the music breathe. His tenor carries that unmistakable mix of muscle and mercy: a burnished tone that can cut through steel, then soften into a whisper without losing authority. He phrases like someone telling the truth slowly, not leaving room for interruption. There’s urgency here, but also patience, and confidence that will give you everything.
The deluxe package deepens that story with newly curated liner notes by co-producer John Koenig, alongside interviews with Brackeen, Rodby, Spencer, and Wayne Segal, son of Joe Segal. Their reflections sketch a fuller portrait of the night and the ecosystem that made it possible: the trust between musicians, the discipline of the room, and the sense that something important could happen if everyone stayed present long enough.
For Brackeen, the date stands as a testament to Henderson’s generosity as a bandleader; his willingness to invite ideas rather than dictate them. Rodby recalls the elasticity of the set, how the music seemed to lengthen and contract in response to the moment. Spencer speaks to the balance required to drive the band without overwhelming it. And Wayne Segal situates the performance within his father’s lifelong commitment to creating space for artists to be fully themselves. These voices don’t annotate the music so much as echo it, extending the conversation across time.
Consonance feels especially vital now as it reframes Henderson as both a monument and collaborator. It reminds us that Henderson’s brilliance wasn’t just in his compositions or his résumé, but in his capacity to meet musicians where they were, and then push them somewhere new.
The sound quality honors the performance as well. Klabin and Koenig’s mastering preserves the dynamic range and tonal depth of the original tapes, while Lutthans’ lacquers translate that fidelity into a vinyl experience that rewards close listening. Le Vinylist’s pressing completes the chain with quiet surfaces and weighty presence, the kind that invites you to drop the needle and stay awhile.
As Resonance’s first release from the Jazz Showcase archives, Consonance sets a high bar and signals a future rich with possibility. These recordings are dispatched from rooms where the music was still being figured out, night by night. And to hear Henderson in that context is to understand jazz as a living practice that resists closure even as it accumulates history.
In the end, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about the kind of continuity that resonates long after the last note fades. Through his work, Henderson asked questions with rigor and grace, and on this Chicago night in 1978, he found answers that still ring true. For listeners willing to meet the music on its own terms, the reward is profound: a front-row seat to a master at work, listening forward.
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AT THE JAZZ SHOWCASE: LIVE IN CHICAGO, A POWERFUL, UNISSUED 1976 AHMAD JAMAL TRIO DATE FROM JOE SEGAL’S STORIED CLUB, arrives exclusively from Resonance Records
The inventive and influential pianist/bandleader/NEA Jazz Master and Lifetime Achievement Grammy recipient is captured at Chicago’s premiere jazz club at the height of his artistry
Ahmad Jamal – At The Jazz Showcase: Live in Chicago, a Limited edition 2-LP set featuring the iconic pianist with bassist John Heard and drummer Frank Gant, recorded on March 20-21, 1976, includes newly curated liner notes by Jamal scholar Eugene Holley, Jr., with memories from Jamal’s daughter Sumayah, and testimonials and appreciations from pianists Joe Alterman and Fred Hersch.
Available Exclusively for Record Store Day on April 18, 2026
At The Jazz Showcase: Live in Chicago captures piano legend Ahmad Jamal in the first-ever release of this trio with bassist John Heard and drummer Frank Gant captured at Joe Segal’s legendary club. The deluxe limited-edition 180-gram 2-LP set will be released on Record Store Day, April 18, 2026 with a 2-CD set to follow on April 24, 2026 on what would have been Joe Segal’s 100th birthday.
Produced by Zev Feldman, called “The Indiana Jones of Jazz,” the album was restored and mastered from the original tapes by engineer and Resonance founder George Klabin, with LP mastering by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab in Salina, KS, and pressing at pressed at Quebec’s audiophile boutique pressing plant Le Vinylist.
It’s an excellent follow-up to Jamal’s critically acclaimed Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse (Vol. 1-3), also produced by Feldman, and extends and elaborates on Jamal’s seven decade-long discography, which includes several standout recordings including Chamber Music of the New Jazz, The Awakening and his 1958 masterpiece, But Not for Me: Ahmad Jamal Live at the Pershing with his hit single, “Poinciana.”
The music from this live date was part of Jazz Showcase owner and founder Joe Segal’s massive archives of audio recordings of legendary artists who performed at the club. Feldman first learned of the archives when he was introduced to Segal in 2011 and is now, with the blessing of Joe’s son Wayne, is in the process of going through the vast treasure trove of material which the family estimates is some 8,000-10,000 tapes.
“Joe was one of the most passionate jazz fans I’d ever met and he brought the best of the best to Chicago for decades at the Jazz Showcase and other venues all around town,” Feldman writes in the recording’s liner notes. “Jamal is one of most prolific artists of our lifetime, and he had a longtime relationship with [Joe], who made these recordings. Jamal played the Jazz Showcase many, many times over the years at the various locations all over Chicago.”
At The Jazz Showcase also features the marvelous musings of Atlanta-based jazz pianist and Jamal scholar Joe Alterman. “One of reasons I picked Joe Alterman to work on this project with me is that he knew Jamal intimately, and I felt it was important to have someone close to him be on this journey with us.” Feldman writes. “All you need to do is listen to this music and you’ll be transported.”
For Mr. Jamal’s daughter Sumayah, who also heads her father’s estate, these March 1976 dates from the Jazz Showcase’s address at the basement of The Happy Medium on Rush Street represent a musical homecoming to the city where her Pittsburgh-born father lived from 1947 to 1962. “My father had tremendous respect for Joe Segal and his legendary Jazz Showcase,” Jamal says. “How thrilling that a treasure trove of previously unreleased recordings of my father’s live performances were discovered in Joe’s personal archives. My father’s musical legacy was forged in Chicago, and these archival recordings reflect the sharp-edged brilliance of the musical voice that was honed in venues like the Jazz Showcase.”
The music on these memorable dates reflect the evolution from Jamal’s “Poinciana” trio with drummer Vernel Fournier and bassist Israel Crosby before the pianist moved from Chicago to New York City in 1962, to the terrific triad Jamal led at the Jazz Showcase with drummer Frank Gant and bassist and Pittsburgh native John Heard: the former, a valued sideman with Donald Byrd, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday, and the latter, who worked with Oscar Peterson, Pharoah Sanders and Count Basie.
Buoyed by that dynamic duo, Jamal still plays with his patented use of syncopated space that influenced everyone including Miles Davis, his Art Tatum-level technique and Errol Garner keyboard flourishes and his ingenious, on-the-spot arrangements, blended with the new influence of McCoy Tyner’s profound pianisms and intricate keyboard colors inspired by Jamal’s use of electric keyboards. Those old and new “Jamalisms” are heard on all the recording’s nine tracks. Standards and popular songs ranging from Johnny Mandel’s “Theme from M*A*S*H” and “A Time for Love,” Antonio Carlos Jobim bossa nova, “Wave,” and the south of the border syncopations on “Have You Met Miss Jones?” to the fusion-like interpretation of Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance” and two soulful solo readings of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss.”
For much of his career, Jamal was known for interpreting the works of other composers in his words, “beyond their wildest dreams.” That changed after his move to New York, when he started performing original material, as evidenced by his near 15 minute opus “Ahmad’s Song,” which is reminiscent of another Jamal track, “Handicapper,” and his Afrocentric-anthemed composition “Swahililand,” sampled decades later by hip-hop producer/beat maker JDilla on De La Soul’s classic track, “Stakes is High,” with a witty reference of the English carol “God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen.”
Though Mr. Jamal left us in 2023 at the age of 93, this splendid recording is an aural love letter to a Windy City that gave his music wings. “I believe that these performances are truly some of my father’s best,” Sumayah Jamal says. “I am grateful to Joe Segal for his dedication to the art form, and his tireless devotion to promoting the careers of generations of jazz musicians like my father.”
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RESONANCE RECORDS PRESENTS A PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED 1975 PERFORMANCE BY SAXOPHONE/FLUTE MASTER YUSEF LATEEF AT CHICAGO’S LEGENDARY JAZZ SHOWCASE is another Record Store Day 2026 exclusive.
Yusef Lateef – Alight Upon The Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase 3-LP set features a Brilliant, Adventurous Concert by Lateef’s Remarkable Quartet with pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Bob Cunningham and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath captured live in June of 1975. Limited-Edition package includes Liner Notes by Lateef biographer Herb Boyd, plus interviews With Multi-Instrumentalist Bennie Maupin, Joe’s son Wayne Segal and more
Available Exclusively for Record Store Day on April 18, 2026
With Alight Upon the Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase, Resonance Records has unearthed a rare and stunning treasure featuring an adventurous and wide-ranging jazz master in a scintillating set at one of the music’s most beloved spaces. The previously unissued live recording captures the iconic saxophonist and flutist Yusef Lateef at the height of his mesmerizing powers in mid-1975, leading a superb quartet with pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Bob Cunningham and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath at Joe Segal’s legendary Jazz Showcase in Chicago.
The limited-edition 180-gram 3-LP set was restored and mastered from the original tapes by engineer and Resonance founder George Klabin, with LP mastering and lacquer cutting by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab in Salina, KS, and pressed at Quebec’s boutique audiophile pressing plant Le Vinylist. The deluxe package includes newly curated liner notes by Lateef biographer Herb Boyd, plus interviews with multi-instrumentalist Bennie Maupin reminiscing about his former mentor. Co-produced by “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman and Michael Velasco, the album was prepared for release with the full cooperation of the artist’s widow, Ayesha Lateef. The vinyl edition will be available on Record Store Day: April 18, 2026, with the 3-CD release to follow on April 24.
“Yusef Lateef was and still remains a legend and towering figure in the legacy of this music, or ‘autophysiopsychic music’ as he called it,” says Feldman. “Mr. Lateef was an amazing artist and I’m so impressed with how he straddled the inside and outside, covering so many different styles. There are so many personal aspects to him, someone always searching for knowledge, learning and gathering info. He put his time on this planet to great use and he’s an inspiration to me.”
That inspiration stretches back to Feldman’s earliest days in the music business. The producer got to know Lateef briefly when he was in is 20s, through his role as music director of his college radio station. “He’d send me promo copies of his albums, and we had some wonderful conversations,” Feldman recalls. “Any Yusef Lateef project I can do is very personal to me, and I’m pleased to see his flag waving amongst the fans of this music. We’re so fortunate to have this wonderful music that’s never been available before. These tapes from 1975 are a total delight for me to listen to, to put it mildly. To have all these different styles of music contained in this 3LP and 3CD set is just an amazing example of his artistry.”
Alight Upon the Lake is particularly fascinating in light of a previous Feldman-produced Lateef release, Atlantis Lullaby: The Concert from Avignon. Featuring the identical quartet and some of the same repertoire as that 1972 concert from France, Alight finds the band three years further along their collective path and back on home turf. The result is a more raucous and freewheeling set, throughout which the group digs deep into material that veers into several of the divergent directions where Lateef’s passions often led – from rapturous spiritual excursions to down-home blues romps, angular abstractions to funky standards and sensual poetic recitations.
In an interview included with the package, Bennie Maupin recalls meeting Lateef in their shared hometown of Detroit, and reflects on the lessons he gleaned from the master’s teaching. “The most important things I learned from him were how to be truthful, to speak your mind creatively and how to live cleanly,” Maupin says. “He was a wonderful person. Brilliant. Forever learning, forever seeking, forever gracious… The music he left us speaks for itself and for him. I do my best to reflect many of the things that he gifted me with.”
The album opens with Kenny Barron’s “The Untitled,” a ferocious tune that opens out into a nearly thirty-minute meditation that in itself encompasses a spectrum of Lateef’s moods and methods. It’s followed by the darting workout of “Mutually Exclusive,” a keen-edged Tranesque tune on the “Giant Steps” model. Roy Brooks’ “Eboness” is a feature for Lateef’s eloquent flute playing, weaving sinuous melodies over the rhythm section’s dark-hued simmer. Barron also contributed “Inside Atlantis,” a burner propelled by Heath’s relentless swing that takes a deep breath in order to showcase Cunningham’s shimmering arco bass.
With “I Remember Webster,” Lateef pays homage to one of his mentors, the late tenor giant Ben Webster, with a soulful ballad luxuriating in his own husky tenor tone. Lateef returns to the flute for Barron’s “Opus 1 & 2,” which progresses from stark minimalist composition to swaggering R&B. On “Golden Goddess” Lateef offers a romantic ode in the guise of the wind, in one moment a window-rattling paramour, the next an impassioned tempest. The band has an obvious blast playing with the Nat King Cole classic “Straighten Up and Fly Right” before concluding with the blues, engaging the Chicago crowd in a spirited singalong during the bluesy “Yusef’s Mood.”
There’s little doubt that Lateef felt comfortable on the stage of the Jazz Showcase. He was one of the Windy City venue’s most frequent headliners, even playing a handful of New Year’s Eve concerts at the storied club. As Feldman points out in his notes, Lateef shared a close relationship with the club’s owner, Joe Segal. “They had a deep friendship which became clear to me as I began working through the Joe Segal archives…Joe Segal is not here, but I know he would be tickled to death to have a Yusef Lateef release from his archives come out. This release celebrates Lateef, Segal and their friendship.”
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STARDUST & STARLIGHT: AT THE JAZZ SHOWCASE A NEVER-BEFORE ISSUED 1979 PERFORMANCE OF DEEP REFLECTIONS AND TRANSPORTING FLIGHTS BY MAL WALDRON SOLO, IN TRIO AND WITH SONNY STITT is the last of the Record Store Day 2026 exclusives.
Mal Waldron – Stardust & Starlight: At The Jazz Showcase, Limited Edition 2-LP set featuring Waldron with bassist Steve Rodby, drummer Wilbur “the Chief” Campbell, and saxophonist Sonny Stitt captured in August 1979. The Elegant, Enigmatic Pianist At The Height Of His Expansive “Second Life” Career Meets The Barnstorming Post-bop Saxophone Virtuoso During “Charlie Parker Month” In Chicago. Newly curated liner notes by Howard Mandel, featuring interviews with pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, bassist Steve Rodby, Wayne Segal and more
Available Exclusively for Record Store Day on April 18, 2026
Mal Waldron’s uniquely penetrating music — moody, percussive, bluesy yet progressive, tempered by his formative experiences with Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln among other leading voices of his generation, burns in Stardust & Starlight: At the Jazz Showcase, a previously unissued recording of the enigmatic piano icon performing live at Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase in Chicago, IL in 1979 with bassist Steve Rodby (prior to his long tenure in Pat Metheny Group), drummer Wilbur “the Chief” Campbell, and special guest saxophonist Sonny Stitt.
Released by Resonance Records and produced by noted “Jazz Detective” Zev Feldman with assistance from pianist-cultural curator Joe Alterman, Stardust & Starlight: At the Jazz Showcase comes in a deluxe 2-LP package with newly curated liner notes written by Howard Mandel, new interviews with pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, Joe Segal’s son Wayne Segal and more. The vinyl set comes out on Record Store Day, April 18, 2026, with the CD to follow on April 24, 2026 which would have been Joe Segal’s 100th birthday.
The limited-edition 180-gram 2-LP set was restored and mastered from the original tapes by engineer and Resonance founder George Klabin and Joe Lizzi, with LP mastering by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab in Salina, KS, and pressed at Quebec’s boutique audiophile pressing plant Le Vinylist.
The album documents an August date that was Waldron’s debut stand at the Jazz Showcase, Chicago’s famed home of the hard-swing, bebop and post-bop music favored by the elder Segal, a devotee who launched his venue in 1947 and ran it until his death at age 94 in 2020 (Wayne Segal continues to present world class jazz at the Showcase to this very day). Waldron, then 54 years old, was kicking off the club’s annual “Charlie Parker Month.”
Having been a professional New York City recording artist since the mid 1950s, sympatico accompanist to Lady Day in her final years and Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, Steve Lacy, Waldron had overcome adversity — a 1963 total breakdown from a heroin overdose — and firmly re-established himself as a force on the international touring scene. Playing for an up-close, appreciative audience, the pianist quickly establishes his indelible sonic imprint and masterful adaptability in unaccompanied pieces, engagements with the house rhythm team and a late-set encounter with ever-challenging Sonny Stitt (on both tenor and alto saxophones).
Waldron was an “inside-outside” conceptualist, bringing urbanity and also focused intensity to classic melodies (“Stella By Starlight,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight”), songbook standards (“All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm,” “I Thought About You,” “It Could Happen to You,” “Old Folks”) and his own indelible compositions (“All Alone” and “Fire Waltz”).
“The thing I remember very distinctly thinking back on the Mal Waldron week,” says Steve Rodby, today Artist in Residence at the School of Music, University of Washington, “was that he sounded so modern to me. His style was pre-Herbie Hancock, but post-Oscar Peterson, sort of in the Monk zone. It had an edge to it. I always felt like you could hear him exploring when he was playing, something you hear in every great player. He really did embody that premium on individuality and distinctive voice that the era favored. Probably lots of people I played with before had that, but with Mal Waldron it really stuck out and finally got my attention.”
Feldman says, “Most people would be surprised to see Waldron playing a lot of bebop during this period, but if anyone would be able to pull off bringing this crew together it’s Joe Segal. This is one of his gifts: to do special curation like this, putting together seemingly disparate elements, because it felt right to him. The music is absolutely wonderful, as you’ll hear, and the audience really comes alive when Sonny Stitt joins in the festivities.”
Mal Waldron sustained his touring and recording career, collaborating with artists including Jeanne Lee, David Murray and Archie Shepp, until his death from cancer in 2022 at age 77. He has been cited as an influence by Matthew Shipp and Ethan Iverson, among contemporary pianists.
Resonance Records is a multi-GRAMMY® Award-winning label (most recently for John Coltrane’s Offering: Live at Temple University for “Best Album Notes”) that prides itself in creating beautifully designed, informative packaging to accompany previously unreleased recordings by the jazz icons who grace Resonance’s catalog. Headquartered in Beverly Hills, CA, Resonance Records is a division of Rising Jazz Stars, Inc. a California 501(c) (3) non-profit corporation created to discover the next jazz stars and advance the cause of jazz. Current Resonance Artists include Tawanda, Eddie Daniels, Tamir Hendelman, Christian Howes and Donald Vega.