[Cover photo credit to Ray Kachatorian]

Grammy and Emmy Award-winning artist Mark Isham has announced At the Carousel Club, his first new solo album in 15 years, arriving August 21, 2026. Having spent his career moving between Jazz, Electronic music, orchestral writing, and cinema, the Academy Award-nominated composer has drawn from all to “create a recombinant musical statement.” Alongside the release, Isham has shared the title track that “brings together the opposing forces that have defined his life in music: discipline and danger, composition and improvisation, machinery and breath.”

Isham says:

The Carousel Club is a place where musical journeys are offered for the taking. This opening track is a joyful invitation—an overture, if you will—to stories that are constantly evolving and offering each listener a different view of the world.

Isham has performed with Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Stanley Clarke, and created film and television scores for projects such as Once Upon A Time, Blade, Crash, A River Runs Through It, and more. But with this work, he doesn’t follow a director’s vision or reinforce “another artist’s emotional world.” He places “his own trumpet voice at the center of a musical environment.”

Recorded at Mad Hatter Studios, the album was born and built upon three weeks of experimentation with Isham’s collection of analog synthesizers. He constructed “electronic landscapes from experimentation rather than assignment.”

Those compositions became the foundation for an ensemble featuring guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, vocalist Ayo Awosika, and the Orchid String Quartet.

Tracklist: 

1. At the Carousel Club
2. Tales of the Street Piano
3. City Lore
4. Number Theory
5. My Night In An Iberian Post Office
6. A More Beautiful Question