[Cover photo credit to Nate Dejene]

Bassist, composer and bandleader Emma Dayhuff has released Mountains, her  second album as a leader, available now via Division 81 Records. The music charts a path back to her childhood in Bozeman, Montana, where she was raised amid the vistas that would eventually find their way into her compositions.

In her life, Dayhuff has moved from Irish fiddle, to bass, studied at the Oberlin Conservatory before moving to Chicago, and then became a performer in New York.

One night on the banks of the Hudson River, she had an unusual experience:

Looking out over the river, I felt the same sense of kinship with the New York City skyline as I did with the mountain ranges surrounding my childhood home. The world suddenly felt smaller, less intimidating.

Mountains grew from her 2025 debut album, Innovations & Lineage: The Chicago Project, which featured saxophonist Isaiah Collier, vocalist Dee Alexander, and percussionist Kahil El’Zabar.

She explains:

The first record was an homage to the Chicago style of groove-based avant-garde playing. This record takes that concept of composition and mixes it with a Los Angeles approach to modern jazz, pulling from R&B, hip-hop, funk, and rock.

For this album, she worked with two Chicagoans, Cory Wilkes and Isaiah Collier, and two Angelenos, Jonathan Pinson and Paul Cornish.

Dayhuff says:

Life is mountains and valleys, you know? These are the moments that define who we are.