Elena Pinderhughes is the most formidable and exciting jazz artist to emerge on the flute in a generation. Her mature debut as a leader might have been an event, but it sounds more like a mood. The buzz for this incredible improviser has been building for more than a decade. In 2016, she was named the top “Rising Star” flautist in a Downbeat poll, two full years after she played with no less a band than Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman, and Esperanza Spalding. Since then, she has played a prominent role in the band of trumpeter Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah as well as guesting with artists as prominent as Common, Snarky Puppy, Terri Lyne Carrington, Terrace Martin, and Ambrose Akinmusire.
Toward the end of 2025, I saw her perform at New York’s Village Vanguard in a band led by pianist Kenny Barron. My friends and I were standing in the narrow stairwell that leads down to the legendary basement club as a young woman excused herself to brush past us. “I’m so sorry”, she said, “I’m one of the performers.” She seemed too young, but in fact she was already 30.
Once on the bandstand, however, she seemed like one of the best and most mature musicians in New York City. Each of her solos was breathtaking—beautiful, assured tone; improvisations bristling with ideas and technique; and a dynamic range that made the flute the evening’s dominant voice. The sophistication of her improvising was at the very highest level.
I Hope You Feel It Too is her proper and long-delayed recording debut as a leader. She and her older brother recorded Catch 22 when she was only nine. It sits at the intersection of her musical interests. It is not a proper “jazz” album, though she has the skills and associations to make a debut where she is mainly featured as a brilliant jazz improviser. It’s not a pop, soul, or hip-hop debut either, though she sings as well as she plays flute and has credibility in that world.
Instead, the album offers a well-integrated sound at the intersection of jazz and its more popular cousins, mostly casting Elena Pinderhughes’ flute as a “lead singer” above rhythm tracks that sometimes have the propulsion of an excellent jazz group but the textures (gliding electric bass or synth, pulsing keyboard parts or guitar washes, some fine guest spots for atmospheric trumpet or saxophone) of soul music or what used to be called “soul jazz“.
For example, “Dancing Through Time” supplies the leader with a gospelized soul track over which she soars with feeling and delicious tone. The drums lead an otherwise anonymous rhythm section through a series of luscious chords, and Pinderhughes plays with assurance like the Luther Vandross of the flute. She embellishes the melody more than she “takes a solo”, though for a half-chorus or so she does improvise with passion. It sounds professionally wonderful. It’s good stuff, but it feels like a half-gesture.
Several dyads—short tracks under two minutes—precede or even blend into a longer statement. “A Rose in Bloom” features Pinderhughes’ gentle wordless vocal above a throbbing landscape of electronic soul. It’s hard to know whether to compare her singing to the early Esperanza Spalding records or to the singing of 1970s jazz turned to 1980s soul diva Patrice Rushen. It flows, almost without a pause, into the hand-percussion-driven “Charm”, with Pinderhughes flute playing a lovely melody over a percolating groove that could have been a track beneath one of the better Cyndi Lauper hits of 40 years ago. The leader’s former employer, trumpeter Chief Adjuah, then plays a muted solo of great lyricism.
Similarly, “Before I Knew Your Name” opens the album with dramatically layered flutes, overlapping with lots of reverb, and eventually merging with a quiet groove of bass, percussion, and some guitar. It is quick and then followed by a hip-hop groove of electric piano, bass, and drums for “If I’m Being Honest”, where Pinderhughes flute is again layered with itself, with synth pads, with wordless vocals and a touch of muted trumpet, all harmonized in a way that is soothing and slightly unsettling too. She improvises here with her astonishing sound: a Hubert Laws for the new century.
Hubert Laws was the Elena Pinderhughes of 50 years ago: a jaw-dropping jazz improviser with a flute tone that made his playing stand up to trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and guitarist George Benson. Laws came along at a moment, as jazz moved from the 1960s to the 1970s, when musicians were negotiating a transition from hard-hitting post-bop to jazz that was blending with rock and soul in different ways. Laws made several (and appeared on many) fine dates for CTI Records, which producer Creed Taylor created after leaving Verve. Rhodes electric pianos, some string or orchestral arrangements, and slick Stevie Wonder-ish backbeats made these records simultaneously serious and appealing to a wider audience. Laws, with his gorgeous flute tone, was almost part of the formula.
Pinderhughes is working in this tradition on I Hope You Feel It Too. As on many of those CTI dates, she brings in strong collaborators. Her brother, Samora Pinderhughes, is featured as a duet partner for “On the Wind”, playing rambling acoustic piano beneath her flute (and some strings) for a couple of minutes. The partnership with alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins on “Life Goes On” gives both more room to improvise with imagination over a propulsive 6/8 groove. Their voices overlap and drive each other to find variations on a simple but imaginative theme that is the best on the album.
Elena Pinderhughes has a knack for appealing melodies. “Over There” is a haunting minor tune that blends her flute and voice into a single, amazing sound. Her instrumental solo briefly rises above the album’s most common sound: a burbling, somewhat anonymous blend of electric bass and keyboards. Wordless vocals reenter in beautiful harmony as she plays, and the track pulls at your heart but, perhaps, never lights a fire.
“510” also puts voice and flute together in an aurally unique way on a hooky melodic line. This track is more urgent, thanks to a drum groove that mixes double-time hip-hop with electronics, but what might have been a thrilling opportunity for Pinderhughes to launch into improvisation is curtailed after three minutes of awesome atmosphere. A listener with jazz on their mind might imagine this composition stretched out in concert with a series of solos. But it is the listener’s imagination working here, not the musicians’.
The longest performance on I Hope You Feel It Too is just over five minutes, but it suggests what this brilliant musician might have up her sleeve. “Where the Body Keeps Secrets” uses the best of the album’s sonic palette—humming electronics and pliant bass in a rhythm section driven by dazzling drumming, plus her otherworldly flute sound—to develop a pleasing composition. Pinderhughes doesn’t need another primary voice to make the tune soar, and when she is clearly improvising, her rhythmic imagination is exciting. Her solo is relatively stretched out here and is followed by a similarly thrilling drum solo. “Where the Body Keeps Secrets” goes somewhere, though it is baffling to hear a studio fade at the end, as if these great musicians weren’t up to the challenge of bringing the listener home.
Elena Pinderhughes’ adult debut recording is, perhaps, trying to find a moody middle ground for the many audiences she has thrilled with her talent. Like her one-generation-older colleague, pianist Robert Glasper, she works in a 21st-century soul-jazz vein. Like her tonal predecessor Hubert Laws, she commands her instrument in a way that gives power to simple melodies. And like her mentor Herbie Hancock, she has the chops, the sensibility, and the inclination to produce music that can appeal to the masses while still harnessing a fair amount of jazz sophistication.
I don’t want to suggest that Elena Pinderhughes should have made a purer jazz recording—her own version of Maiden Voyage or Speak Like a Child—before I Hope You Feel It Too. Her artistic path will, no doubt, be long and (I hope) varied. Starting the menu with a consommé is as valid a choice as any. My ears, however, are hoping for spicier and more substantive entrees to come.