For those still unaware, Andrea Brachfeld has built a wide-ranging career as a flutist, composer, arranger, educator, and bandleader whose work spans jazz, Latin jazz, Brazilian music, salsa, charanga, funk, and other improvisational traditions.

A graduate of New York City’s High School of Music & Art and the Manhattan School of Music, she further developed her improvisational language through studies with Hubert Laws, Jimmy Heath, George Coleman, and Mike Longo.

Her recording and performance history includes work with artists such as Tito Puente, Paquito D’Rivera, Hubert Laws, Wallace Roney, Ray Barretto, Dave Valentín, Wycliffe Gordon, Wayne Wallace, Bill O’Connell, and others. Rather than defining her through any one association, those collaborations reflect the breadth of musical settings in which she has worked and the adaptability of the flute within them.

Brachfeld has also maintained a substantial life as a composer, educator, and ensemble leader. Her group Andrea Brachfeld and Insight has provided an ongoing setting for her writing and for the interaction between flute and rhythm section.

Across these roles, her work has consistently joined technical command with an interest in melody, groove, and communication.

That combination of experience and curiosity provides the context for A Holiday Celebration of Light (releasing November 16th, 2026), a project that brings another dimension of Brachfeld’s musical identity into focus.

A Holiday Celebration of Light grew from Andrea Brachfeld’s longstanding desire to make a seasonal recording centered on the flute. With pianist, arranger, and co-producer Bill O’Connell, bassist Blake Meister, drummer Eric Kennedy, and special guest Wycliffe Gordon on trombone throughout the album, Brachfeld shapes a nine-track program that moves among Christmas and Hanukkah repertoire, sacred tradition, and original music.

The recurring image of light provides the connective idea, allowing familiar songs and less expected selections to coexist without reducing the program to a single holiday tradition.

1. Silent Night [4:40]
2. Angels We Have Heard on High [4:27]
3. Phos Hilaron [5:17]
4. See the Light [4:11]
5. Ho Ho Ho [4:53]
6. Christmas Time Is Here [4:46]
7. O’ Hanukkah, Sevivon [3:50]
8. Ma’oz Tzur [3:31]
9. The Christmas Song [6:54]

With a sincere hope that we all enjoy her new album of holiday favorites and her two originals, Andrea opens her new album on the wholly impassioned Silent Night and a diligently affecting Angels We Have Heard on High and then we are gifted the veritably shimmering ancient Christian hymn Phos Hilaron and the first of the originals in the form of the luxuriously supple See the Light.

Along next is the other original in the form of the gentle blues-jazz swinger Ho Ho Ho and that is in turn followed by the effortlessly chic Christmas Time Is Here, the free-flowingly vibrational Hanukkah celebration within O’ Hanukkah, Sevivon, the new festive set rounding out on the alluring Jewish liturgical poem Ma’oz Tzur, coming to a close on the breathy brilliance of an engagingly delightful The Christmas Song.

Musicians / Instruments:
Andrea Brachfeld - flute, alto flute, vocals
Wycliffe Gordon - trombone, vocals, spoken word
Bill O’Connell - piano
Blake Meister - bass
Eric Kennedy - drums

Official Purchase Link

www.andreabrachfeld.com