Brand New Life Brandee Younger

• 1 You're A Girl For One Man Only 03:59
• 2 Brand New Life 04:32
• 3 Come Live With Me (Interlude) 02:23
• 4 Livin' And Lovin' In My Own Way 04:58
• 5 Running Game (Intro) 01:07
• 6 Running Game 04:39
• 7 Moving Target 04:21
• 8 Dust 04:36
• 9 The Windmills Of Your Mind 02:56
• 10 If It's Magic 03:30
• Total Runtime 37:01

Info for Brand New Life

GRAMMY®-nominated harpist and composer Brandee Younger releases her new album, "Brand New Life".

Produced by multi-hyphenate drummer and composer Makaya Mccraven, on Brand New Life, Younger celebrates one of her greatest inspirations, iconic jazz harpist and composer Dorothy Ashby. Ashby is widely credited with having asserted the harp’s place in contemporary music, showcasing the traditionally-classical instrument on groundbreaking albums such as Afro-Harping and Dorothy’s Harp. Her unparalleled body of work has continued to be influential for decades and has been heavily sampled and transposed across jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, by artists including Jay-Z, J. Dilla, Pete Rock and Flying Lotus.

Brand New Life is a stunning amalgamation of past and present, combining original works from Younger, select reinterpretations of Ashby’s work, and previously-unrecorded compositions by Ashby. Younger was initially introduced to Ashby’s work through the many hip-hop artists who sampled her music, and now collaborates with some of those very artists on Brand New Life, including the legendary Pete Rock and 9th Wonder. Brand New Life also includes features by Meshell N’degeocello, Mumu Fresh, and production by drummer and composer Makaya McCraven.

Younger says of the album, “Creating this album has been a longtime dream of mine. I really had a lot of living to do before being able to execute it, genuinely. The finished product is truly representative of where I am now and it is an honor to convey that through the compositions of one of my heroes.”

The first single from the album, “You’re A Girl For One Man Only,” is a composition by Ashby that had never before been recorded, the charts of which were only unearthed through Brandee’s lifelong commitment to Ashby’s history. What may have become a jazz standard of 1960s - had it been recorded at the time of it’s conception - now emerges as timeless as ever and is colored with the vibrance of the 21st Century via Makaya’s trademark cultural synthesizer. The single is accompanied by a visualizer that further immerses listeners in the ethereal world of Brand New Life.

Celebrated as the premier harpist of her generation, Brandee Younger has broken new ground for harpists over the entirety of her career. Younger made history as the first Black female solo artist to be GRAMMY®-nominated for Best Instrumental Composition, for “Beautiful is Black” from her genre-busting 2021 major-label debut album, Somewhere Different. That same year the album also garnered an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Jazz Album – Instrumental. Along with the release of Brand New Life, Younger will be embarking on a series of headlining shows across the U.S. this spring, and will follow her whirlwind 2023 with a residency as SFJazz’s Resident Artistic Director in early 2024.

Brandee Younger, harp, vocals on track 5
Rashaan Carter, bass
Makaya McCraven, drums
Joel Ross, vibraphone
DeSean Jones, flute
Yuri Popowycz, strings
Mumu Fresh, vocals (track 2)
Pete Rock, drum Programming (track 2)
Linda McNease-Younger, vocals (track 5)
Sharon McNease-Griggs, vocals (track 5)
Meshell Ndegeocello, vocals (track 8)
Junius Paul, bass (track 9)
9th Wonder, drum programming, additional production

Brandee Younger
Among the most celebrated jazz artists to emerge in the 21st century, Brandee Younger is a harpist, composer and bandleader whose music connects spiritual jazz and classical training to the rhythmic soulfulness of R&B and hip-hop. She grew up on Long Island, where she sang gospel, studied the harp classically and became enamored of both hip-hop and the vintage soul that rap producers sampled. When Younger was a teenager, her father introduced her to Alice Coltrane’s music — a transformative moment that all but defined her life’s journey.

In Coltrane and, later, Dorothy Ashby, Younger saw two strong, empowering Black women whose brilliance on the harp inspired Younger to stake her own claim on jazz history. Over the past two decades, Younger has honored these two artistic heroines while carving a singular path. On top of recording their music, she has collaborated with John and Alice Coltrane’s son Ravi, a spellbinding saxophonist, and with iconic figures in the Coltrane legacy, like the late Pharoah Sanders. Along the way, she’s also become a go-to player in popular music, contributing to projects and performances by Ms. Lauryn Hill, Beyoncé, Stevie Wonder, the Roots, Common, John Legend and many others. As the New Yorker wrote, “Her radiant playing is as cogent on hip-hop and R&B albums as it is set against classical and jazz backdrops.”

Her first LP for the storied Impulse! Records label — a.k.a. The House That Trane Built — was 2021’s “Somewhere Different”. A track from that album, “Beautiful Is Black,” earned Younger a Grammy nomination in the Best Instrumental Composition category, making her the first Black female solo artist to achieve this. Two years later, on “Brand New Life”, Younger revitalized newly discovered Ashby compositions, and that LP won the 2024 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album. “Gadabout Season”, released in 2025, is a more reflective and personal work focusing on Younger’s inimitable original music. In addition to her non-stop performance schedule, Younger is a dedicated educator, teaching on the faculties of New York University and the New School.

This album contains no booklet.