(February 27, 2026) DownJazz Records is thrilled to announce This Is Neo-Soul, a new album from keyboardist, composer, and longtime Roy Ayers music director Mark Adams, arriving March 20, 2026 — just over a year after Ayers’ passing at 84. The 10-track release — available worldwide on limited-edition color vinyl, CD, and digital platforms — gathers fifteen all-star musicians from the working bands not only of Ayers, but also of Chic, Lonnie Liston Smith, Luther Vandross, Gloria Gaynor, Gil Scott Heron and Chaka Khan.
Adams spent more than twenty years as the musical center of Roy Ayers’ touring group Ubiquity — the long-running, ever-evolving band Ayers used to carry his sound around the world — serving as keyboardist, arranger, and onstage ballast throughout thousands of shows. True to its present-tense title, This Is Neo-Soul isn’t a gaze into the rearview mirror. It’s a continuation of a language Adams lived for more than two decades.
After the “Godfather of Neo-Soul” passed on, Adams and producer David Schwartz chose not to retreat into archival reverence; they understood that Ayers’ sound was never fixed to one moment. It was — and remains — a living vocabulary. Schwartz puts the lineage plainly: “There is a triad. There is Roy Ayers, Lonnie Liston Smith, and then Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson. That’s the triad that makes up this very cool neo-soul set.”
“It’s a Roy Ayers, ’70s sound, but we authenticated it with the people who played that music and the people trained by them,” Adams says. “I played with Roy for more than 20 years. He taught me everything. So we made this the real thing.”
“This is not a tribute band. This is the band. The true representatives,” Schwartz adds. “These guys grew up on this. Mark’s played this music in different formats over a thousand shows worldwide. This tutelage of mentor and mentee is evident in the album and in the band.”
The core band includes Chris DeCarmine (drums, Roy Ayers), Dave Mullins (saxophone, Gloria Gaynor, Gill Scott Heron), Monte Croft (vibraphone, Gladys Knight), Steve Kroon (percussion, Luther Vandross), and Kenyatta Beasley (trumpet, Mary J Blige). Additional contributors include Chic vocalist Kimberly Davis; vocalists John Pressley (Roy Ayer), Jonathan Quash (Mark Adams), and Miya Bass (Broadway-Lion King); guitarists Bill White (Lonnie Liston Smith) and John Smith guitar, (William Patterson); and bassists Roy Bennett (Bernard Perdie), Donald Nicks (Roy Ayers), and Emanuel “Chulo” Gatewood Diana Reeves) plus Brooklyn gospel singers.
For Adams, the record marks both a tribute and a handoff. But no matter which lens you look at it through, one core truth remains: This Is Neo-Soul — performed and helmed by some of the finest, truest Ayers heirs — does the deeply missed “Godfather of Neo-Soul” proud.
Across its 10 tracks, the album reimagines classics, reshapes fragments from Adams’ past catalog, and introduces new material with dance-floor momentum. “Open Letter,” originally a ballad Adams wrote for his late aunt, became a dance track after DeCarmine and vocalist Kimberly Davis heard a different pulse inside it.
