New Album: House Party on Turtle Bay Records, Out April 10
CHAMPIAN FULTON MARKS HER 20TH ALBUM WITH HOUSE PARTY, A LIVE NEW YORK CELEBRATION RECORDED AMONG FRIENDS AT TURTLE BAY HEADQUARTERS
FEATURING HER LONGTIME TRIO WITH HIDE TANAKA ON BASS AND FUKUSHI TAINAKA ON DRUMS, WITH SPECIAL GUESTS KLAS LINDQUIST ON ALTO SAXOPHONE AND CORY WEEDS ON TENOR SAXOPHONE
OUT APRIL 10 VIA TURTLE BAY RECORDS
Pianist and vocalist Champian Fulton is thrilled to announce her 20th album, the aptly titled House Party, arriving April 10 on Turtle Bay Records. She recorded the album live in March 2025 during a private evening at producer Scott Asen’s home — Turtle Bay Headquarters in New York City — backed by her longtime trio of bassist Hide Tanaka and drummer Fukushi Tainaka, with alto saxophonist Klas Lindquist and tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds joining across the program.
Friends, longtime listeners, and close collaborators gathered for dinner and stayed as the music began. As the band kicks off, you hear champagne popping in the background — recalling the informal jam-session atmosphere of Dinah Washington’s 1955 classic Dinah Jams!. The evening also marked Fulton’s 40th birthday.
Across more than twenty years in New York, Fulton has built an international career grounded in the American song tradition and in the swing lineage passed down through her father’s mentor, Clark Terry. Her first paid performance came at Terry’s 75th birthday celebration when she was ten. Since then, she has performed in more than twenty-five countries, and maintained a long-running presence at Birdland, where her live recording Meet Me at Birdland earned Best Vocal Album of the Year from the NYC Jazz Record.
House Party follows Fulton’s earlier Turtle Bay release At Home and continues her practice of recording jazz in intimate, lived-in spaces. The gathering also grew from Cory Weeds’s annual visits to New York with groups of Canadian listeners who spend days moving from club to club across the city. Instead of presenting a traditional concert, Fulton invited everyone to dinner and performed without advance preparation. “I wanted to lean toward real jazz — jazz musicians hanging out with their friends, having a nice time, making music just for that moment. Getting together in a room, talking and eating and listening to music, that’s my reality. That’s what I love.”
“I moved to New York when I was 17, and I’m here and doing a lot of things that I always wanted to do, playing nice gigs and recording with great people. I feel pretty good about turning 40.”
The program opens with Isham Jones and Gus Kahn’s “The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else),” a standard Fulton first recorded on her second album, 2010’s The Breeze and I; her longtime affection for the song drew her to revisit it. The trio then tackles Gus Arnheim, Abe Lyman, and Arthur Freed’s “I Cried for You,” which she performs frequently with Tanaka and Tainaka. “I just never get tired of singing and playing that song,” she says.
Several selections carry personal and musical history. Hoagy Carmichael’s immortal “Stardust,” featuring Lindquist on alto saxophone, was a song Fulton often performed with her father and one he requested again the night before the party. Wayne Shorter’s “One by One,” drawn from the Jazz Messengers repertoire, appears here in a trio setting without horns and reflects Fulton’s ongoing exploration of Shorter’s music. Cole Porter’s “Get Out of Town” reunites her with Weeds on a song they first recorded together more than a decade earlier and have recently brought back into performance.
By the time the band reaches Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce,” the gathering has taken on the character of an extended jam session, allowing soloists to stretch without the time limits of a studio take. Listeners briefly wondered whether the evening was a concert, a session, or a party before settling fully into celebration.
An unplanned encore closes the album — Douglas Cross, George Cory, and J. Windsor’s “Carry Me Back to Old Manhattan,” which Fulton and Weeds had not performed since recording it the previous year. Prompted by an audience request, Fulton quickly reviewed the harmony, laughed through half-remembered lyrics, and carried the performance forward as friends in the room tried to help her recall the words. Asen chose to leave the moment intact — preserving the warmth and spontaneity of the evening.
There’s a bittersweetness just below the surface: the absence of her father Stephen Fulton. A trumpeter, bandleader, and educator closely associated with Clark Terry, he spent his final years on dialysis and passed away in early September 2025. While he couldn’t be there for the party, he was deeply aware of it — and father and daughter remained in daily contact, sharing news of performances, recordings, and future plans. “If I can’t share these things with him, are they really happening?” she asks today.
Listening back now, “It just brings back these warm memories of what fun we had,” Fulton says. “It’s a celebration of me moving to New York as a 17-year-old girl with not a lot of money, and a dream to become a jazz musician and play with great jazz musicians and travel the world and make records. Turning 40, I realize that is exactly what I’m doing. Literally living my young-girl dream.”
Tracklisting
The One I Love (Belongs to Somebody Else)
I Cried for You
Stardust
One by One
Get Out of Town
Billie’s Bounce
Carry Me Back to Old Manhattan