2025 · Album
Southern Nights
Recorded 2023 · Artwork Records · Produced by Unknown
Fortner's Southern Night Reimagined
Sullivan Fortner's Southern Nights is a Grammy-winning jazz record that finds warmth in familiar Southern textures.
Southern Nights, released in 2025 on Artwork Records, is Sullivan Fortner's record and the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album it received in 2026 is the clearest sign that it landed with listeners and voters alike. The album was recorded in 2023, and its Southern character comes through in the phrasing and the unhurried pacing rather than in any obvious gimmick.
What strikes a listener first is how Fortner treats the piano as a storyteller rather than a showman. The tempos stay relaxed, the voicings are rich without being crowded, and the lines breathe. This is not an album built on virtuoso runs. It rewards attention to touch and to the spaces between phrases, which is where the Southern idiom he is working in tends to live.
For anyone coming to Fortner, this is a sensible entry point. It shows him as a composer and interpreter with a clear identity, and the Grammy recognition gives it a more visible place in his catalog than most of his earlier work. It is a strong, confident record rather than a radical one, and that is part of its appeal.
