St. Louis-based composer Todd Mosby takes a wide-angle approach on American Heartland, a 12-track album that moves between contemporary jazz, New Age, folk, blues, solo acoustic guitar, and jazz-rock with a distinctly cinematic sense of motion. The result feels less like a genre exercise than a musical map of Missouri’s emotional and physical landscape.
Across the collection, lush orchestration, featured female vocal passages, horn-driven momentum, and stately strings give the music a vivid sense of dimension. Elsewhere, Mosby uses sparse, image-forward lyrics as brushstrokes. “I like to use words to convey images,” Mosby says. That visual instinct runs through American Heartland, where Missouri is as much a presence as it is a place.
Musicians include Vinnie Colaiuta, Tom Scott, Leland Sklar, Luis Conte, Michael Manring, Dapo Torimiro, Nick Lane, Lola Kristine, Laura Vall, Dan Fornero, Judy Kang, John Dickson, Bruce Carver.
