Lauren Henderson, Sonidos Review

By Stamish Malcuss

Lauren Henderson’s Sonidos, released August 1, 2025 on Brontosaurus Records, is an album built on the heritage of vocal jazz. Across seventeen tracks, Henderson fashions a bridge between jazz, Afro-Latin, and the deep well of standards that have long invited jazz musicians to reshape the familiar into the personal. The result is an album that plays like a journey in which sound itself (“sonido”) becomes a way of remembering and of imagining anew.

At the center of Sonidos is Henderson’s voice, an instrument of striking intentionality. Her phrasing is sculpted with care, and she adds vocal harmonies to enrich the music with inner voices. On “Vida,” Henderson’s sultry timbre dances atop the warm interplay of Joel Ross’ vibraphone, Sullivan Fortner’s piano, Dezron Douglas’ bass, and Joe Dyson’s drums. Her delivery embodies the song’s invitation to risk vulnerability, her tone intimate yet assured. Similarly, “Luna” unfolds as a hypnotic waltz, where Henderson’s vocal lines shimmer with grace as she threads them through Afro-Latin rhythmic roots. Here, one hears how deeply she treats the voice as a storyteller and harmonic guide.

The band Henderson has assembled are co-narrators in this story. Fortner’s piano is mercurial, balancing percussive and liquid passages while shaping harmonic landscapes with sophistication. Ross, whose vibraphone adds a dimension of iridescence, most notable on “Flight,” where his lines provide buoyant counterpoint to Henderson’s grounded warmth in a medium swing setting. Douglas and Dyson keep the music tethered to groove while remaining responsive to nuance, their swing pliant and their contemporary Afro-Latin textures alive with detail. Guest percussionist Luisito Quintero enriches “Soledad” with authentic Afro-Cuban percussion hues, while Eric Wheeler offers a resonant depth on select tracks, notably “Truth” and “Trouble,” where his bass underpins Henderson’s interpretive intensity.

Henderson’s originals reveal her musicality as a composer. “Bold” is swinging message of resilience, its lyric insistence matched by hard bop vitality and crisp swing. Her vocal harmonies are excellent and add much to the arrangement. “La Llegada” is a celebration and statement. With a rhythmic exultation within Afro-Latin roots that marks the catchy melody and lyrics of the ongoing presence of joy as resistance. These pieces exist in dialogue with her interpretations of standards. On “On The Street Where You Live,” Henderson begins in hushed dialogue with bass, unfolding the melody with grace before the ensemble gradually expands the sonic palette. Her reading of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” embodying the contemporary swing and freshness of her modern inflection and interpretation. In each case, Henderson asserts her interpretive philosophy, which is to honor tradition while allowing personal and cultural identity to reshape it.

What makes Sonidos appealing is the way Henderson binds heritage and today’s modern jazz. Her Panamanian, Montserratian, and Caribbean roots are the soil from which her musical fruits natural grows. The rhythmic vitality of Afro-Caribbean traditions, the harmonic elasticity of jazz, and the poetic imagery of Latin song all converge here in ways that feel natural and inviting. When Henderson sings “Sonidos,” the album’s title track, one senses her deep trust in sound’s ability to carry ancestry forward, to embody her personal memory and the collective history of tradition.

Captured at Flux Studios by Daniel Sanint and Bailey Kislak, the album’s sound is crystalline yet warm, a balance that preserves both immediacy and depth. The recording captures the subtlety of Henderson’s vocal dynamics, from breathy intimacy to resonant multipart vocal harmonies. The ensemble’s interactions remain transparent and balanced. The mix allows vibraphone and piano to shimmer without crowding the voice, and the low end is full without heaviness. This sonic clarity strengthens the album’s conceptual core of sound as a medium of connection.

Sonidos affirms Lauren Henderson as a vocalist and composer with a voice that will engage and hold your musical imagination. She sings notes with the resonance of lineages, Afro-Latin rhythms, jazz harmonies, and vocal harmonies to convey stories. For jazz fans, the album offers an interpretive narrative of depth. The ensemble interplay, rhythmic integration, and cross-cultural musical dialogue is spot-on. The project is successful in concept and craft. The merging of style and languages are coherent and form emotionally resonant statements. Above all, it is an album shaped with care, history, and vision.