DEBUT ALBUM FROM PHILADELPHIA BASED ENSEMBLE NOVO SET FOR RELEASE ON JULY 16th Blue Night features fresh takes on samba and bossa nova classics as well as several originals Philadelphia, PA - Ensemble Novo, a six-piece band of Philadelphia-area based musicians, will release its debut album Blue Night on July 16th via independent label Frosty Cordial Records. Ensemble Novo is the brainchild of Tom Moon, the best-selling author and former Philadelphia Inquirer music critic who currently contributes to NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Moon returned to active music-making in 2011 with Moon Hotel Lounge Project’s Into The Ojala. Since that release, he’s performed regularly in Philadelphia with musicians of all ages and backgrounds – Ensemble Novo includes guitarist Ryan McNeely, who graduated from Temple University’s music school in 2012, and percussionist Jim Hamilton, a fixture on the music scene since the 1980s. Inspired by the music of Brazil, the group creates a spacious, welcoming sound. “We play quietly – Joao Gilberto is a patron saint for us,” says Moon. “People are constantly pelted with sound these days, and our goal is to create a little refuge from all that, using gentle acoustic textures and gorgeous melodies.” Produced and engineered by Jeff Hiatt (The Lowlands, Skip Heller, Suzie Brown, Liz Fullerton) and recorded at Turtle Studios in Philadelphia, Blue Night is less focused on individual feats of technique and more on creating a sound heard on the northern coast of Brazil on a starry night or in a hidden Sao Paulo cocktail lounge. Its sweet, sultry music will encourage listeners to escape to a far off place. Ensemble Novo is comprised of Behn Gillece (vibraphone), Ryan McNeely (electric and nylon string guitars), Mark Przybylowski (bass guitar), Eli Sklarsky (drums), Jim Hamilton (percussion) and Tom Moon (saxophone). www.ensemblenovo.com

You could do much, much worse on this final Wednesday of August than have a cool drink at the bar while a light samba taps out by the windows. This is Sansom Street I'm talking about, not Ipanema, but hey, it'll do. Music critic-turned-bossa-nova sherpa Tom Moon's Ensemble Novo are doing one of their regular slots at Time tonight, and it may well be your last chance to truly feel that peak-level summer idleness you can already sense is being torn away.