seraphic

Here’s Johnny Hodges, delivering four minutes of the most seraphic alto saxophone playing to be found on record, on this chestnut from Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Far East Suite.”

For “No Pude,” which translates to “I could not,” Pimienta’s seraphic vocals cut through haunting harmonies as she wrestled with the exhaustion and apprehension her home country conjured within her.

Pleasant it is not, but neither is the story — and the moments of seraphic beauty become all the more redemptive.

Very early on a recent weekday morning, Duff arrived on a video call from her Los Angeles home looking seraphic in a white dress embellished with broderie anglaise.

He presumed the 20-minute collage he recorded — a flow state of ecstatic bird song and rushing water captured underground, undergirded by seraphic drones — would be a stand-alone release.