Simon Moullier's New 2024 Studio Album Elements of Light on LP.

Throughout Elements of Light, vibraphonist-composer Simon Moullier reconciles his love for mid-century acoustic jazz with inspired production choices from pop and alternative rock, blending vibraphone and piano melodies with synthesizers. Here on this fifth album, he emphasizes the concept of "unfolding."

"This is an important word — the unfolding of a song," says Moullier, who was born in France and lives in New York. "It's something I'm very attached to, and something I'm always working on." As he explains, many of his essential influences — Wayne Shorter, Milton Nascimento, Toninho Horta, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Ravel — have been masterful unfolders in their writing.

Elements of Light isn't "crossover" jazz or "jazz-adjacent"; rather, it is a personal and original expression of a tradition Moullier inherited from his musical heroes.

The album showcases Moullier's unique skill in merging disparate influences with imagination. Along the way a couple of special guests elevate the proceedings. The pianist Gerald Clayton, who appears on the title track, gave Moullier deeply meaningful lessons when the vibraphonist was a student at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz (then still the Monk Institute). "Lotus," featuring the Chicago-rooted trumpeter Marquis Hill, nods to the short piano compositions of Mompou, with a key change near its end that evokes the concept of rebirth (hence the title). On "Pyramid of the Sun," Moullier integrates elements of progressive rock and blues. "Primavera" acknowledges Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel in its intro, and the ballad writing of McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson as it unfurls. "Jiwa" is a tenderhearted homage to Moullier's favorite Brazilian composers.

These are songs whose brief gesture moves us. And in turn, we invoke them for everything they release in us, if only for a moment.