Music Monday: Traveling Music

I’m on the road this week and that means I’m loading up some music for long days in the airport and longer nights in the air. I have a long tradition of putting albums on my phone and when I decide to listen to some music finding nothing that I like. It’s annoying and predictable.

I want to continue to my dive into the Miles Davis discography with two classic expressions of Miles electric period: Bitches Brew and Live-Evil. I’ve blogged about bothrecently and found the 1970 Cellar Door sessions particularly exciting once I managed to wrap by head around them.

I’ve enjoying a couple newer albums. Chris Potter’s latest Alive with Ghosts Today is very enjoyable. I’ve never loved Bill Frissell, but who doesn’t love Nate Smith on drums. Rane Moore is fantastic on clarinet and Potter does Potter things on sax. You can listen to a lot of the album here. Here are a few tracks:

I also learned that [Ahmed] released a new album this week: Play Monk. I’ve blogged about them before. This album is a celebration of Monk and if you like [Ahmed] you’ll like this album:

I always was taken by Ben Wendell’s latest album BaRcoDE (2026). What makes this album special is Joel Ross, Patricia Brennan, Simon Moullier and Juan Diego Villalobos on vibes and other percussion do something magical to Wendell’s sax. This feels like travel music to me more than the other stuff. There’s a good chance that I’ll listen to this. 

To end where I started — with Miles Davis — I might listen to Cassandra Wilson’s Traveling Miles (1999) which feels like a nice traveling companion if there’s ever been one.

And maybe I will pair it was Gabrielle Cavassa’s new album Diabola (20260.