The ECHO Jazz 2016 Award nominations have been announced, including three for Joshua Redman projects: International Saxophone Instrumentalist of the Year for his work with James Farm on their latest album, City Folk and International Ensemble of the Year to both James Farm and The Bad Plus Joshua Redman and their self-titled debut album. Tigran Hamasyan has been nominated for International Piano Instrumentalist of the Year for his Nonesuch debut, Mockroot. The ECHO Jazz Awards ceremony will take place in Hamburg on May 26.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kicked off the final leg of its 2015 tour in Boulder last night, with stops in Arizona, New Mexico, and California in the coming week, culminating with a four-night residency at the SFJAZZ Center. The quartet's eponymous debut album has been named the No. 1 Best Jazz Album of 2015 by PopMatters. "Together," says the site, "the band is particularly wonderful."

There's more than a month to go before 2015 comes to a close, and already the UK music magazines have begun to weigh in on the year's best music. Uncut and Mojo have published their lists of the Best Albums of the Year, and included among them are a number of Nonesuch releases, all firsts of a sort: Olivia Chaney's debut album, Rhiannon Giddens's first solo record, and the debut from the newly minted quartet of The Bad Plus Joshua Redman.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kicks off a tour of North America at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts tonight, followed by stops this month in Toronto, Chicago, Madison, Carmel, Columbus, Saratoga Springs, Northampton, and Boston. In December, the band heads West for shows in Boulder, Phoenix, Albuquerque, San Diego, and Santa Cruz, closing out the 2015 touring with a four-night residency at SFJAZZ in San Francisco, December 10–13. The tour features music from The Bad Plus Joshua Redman's recently released self-titled debut album, which the New York Times calls "a knockout," and NPR describes as "a roaring and beautiful summit meeting."

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, which kicked off the European leg of its tour over the weekend, stopped by the KPLU-FM studios in Seattle during the recent US leg of the tour to discuss and perform from their just-released self-titled debut album, which host Abe Beeson calls "the jazz album of the year so far." Watch the band's KPLU performances of the album's first two tracks, "As This Moment Slips Away" and "Beauty Has It Hard," here.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman has unveiled a brief video of the group—saxophonist Joshua Redman and The Bad Plus, bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King—at Brooklyn Recording studio as they made their just-released self-titled debut album. You can watch the short piece, set to an excerpt of the album track "As This Moment Slips Away," here. The band kicks off the European leg of its tour this weekend.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman kicks off a tour featuring music from its newly released self-titled debut album. The tour begins with two sets at the Highline Ballroom in NYC Wednesday for the Blue Note Jazz Festival, followed by shows in the US and festival sets across Canada through June. The European leg of the tour begins at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival in England on July 4. The US tour picks up again in October. "Full of genre-blending compositions and crafty rhythms," says The New Yorker, "the record shows that they are jazz outliers who remain primed for adventure."

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, the debut album from the eponymous quartet, is out now in North America (June 8 for the rest of the world). "The album is a knockout," exclaims the New York Times. "It is impressive how much vital presence [Redman] brings to the Bad Plus without altering the band’s dynamic." It's "a roaring and beautiful summit meeting," says NPR. "The ideas are impressive by themselves, but become more powerful as Redman and the rhythm section go about developing them ... [T]he real triumph of The Bad Plus Joshua Redman: It exhibits genuinely fresh thinking." The Bad Plus Joshua Redman begins a world tour in NYC June 10.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, whose self-titled debut album is due out next week in North America and June 8 elsewhere, performed at the Detroit Jazz Festival in 2014, when Redman was Artist in Residence there. NPR's Jazz Night in America was there to capture the new quartet, fresh out of the studio. Watch the performance and an interview with the band here. The new album is streaming in full till May 25 as an NPR First Listen. The quartet kicks off a tour at the Blue Note Jazz Festival on June 10.

The Bad Plus Joshua Redman's self-titled, debut album is due out next week and is streaming in full till then as an NPR First Listen at npr.org. The album is "a roaring and beautiful summit meeting," says NPR's Tom Moon. "The ideas are impressive by themselves, but become more powerful as Redman and the rhythm section go about developing them ... [T]he real triumph of The Bad Plus Joshua Redman: It exhibits genuinely fresh thinking." The album, he concludes, "draws on a range of old ideas (as old as Chopin nocturnes and '60s rock) as fuel for a journey into the murky, terrifying, thrilling unknown."

In 2011, The Bad Plus invited saxophonist Joshua Redman to join them for a week of performances at the Blue Note in NYC. They then played a handful of dates before heading into the studio in 2014 to record their debut album, The Bad Plus Joshua Redman, due May 26 on Nonesuch (June 8 outside North America). Pre-order to download the track "Dirty Blonde," written by bassist Reid Anderson, now. Seven of the nine tracks on the album are new compositions by the quartet members who, in addition to Anderson and Redman, include The Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer David King; the other two songs on the album are new arrangements of Bad Plus favorites. The Bad Plus Joshua Redman begins a world tour in NYC June 10.