New Music: Emma Dayhuff, Mountains

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Picture yourself as a dot in a vast mountain range.

Early in the morning, you ascend a ridgeline as a thick bank of fog sweeps over the adjacent mountainside, fills the canyon below, and begins to overtake you. As you reach the peak, a second bank of fog rises to meet the first, creating a double updraft on both sides of the ridge, engulfing you in dense, whirling clouds. You feel sublimated, insignificant, and unafraid. A guardian watches over you.

This is what bassist, composer and bandleader Emma Dayhuff conjures in the first minutes of Mountains, her forthcoming second album as a leader. The music charts a path back to her childhood in Bozeman, Montana, where she was raised amid the jaw-dropping vistas that would eventually find their way into her compositions.

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

The band itself reflects those two musical worlds, pairing Chicagoans Corey Wilkes and Isaiah Collier with Angelenos Paul Cornish and Jonathan Pinson.

Visit online at emmadayhuff.com/