Music that feels good: StFX jazz professor Kevin Brunkhorst’s new album gaining airtime across North America and Europe

A new jazz recording by StFX music professor Kevin Brunkhorst is tearing up the airways.

'After the Fire' is a hit across radio stations in North America and Europe. The album was released on Calligram Records from Chicago in July 2025. It features current and past colleagues of Prof. Brunkhorst's from the StFX Music Department and was recorded in fall 2023 at Joel Plaskett's Fang Recording studio in Dartmouth, NS.

"I'm tickled about the airplay," Prof. Brunkhorst says. "As of yesterday, it's on over 165 stations in North America and Europe. Several different tracks are on the air, and it's not going away."

He wrote and arranged the music between the COVID summer of 2020 and the summer of 2023. It reflects the stuff he went through personally in that time, Prof. Brunkhorst says.

"I think of jazz less as a genre or a particular sound of music and more as an operating system. It's a way of understanding the music and playing together. I'm a sucker for melody, and I want to hear songs that stick with me. I wrote with that in mind. I wanted to play some steel-stringed acoustic guitar, because it's an organic sound that I think is under-represented in jazz."

He says he wrote these tunes for the band he used: Paul Tynan (trumpet), Kenji Omae (saxophone), Tom Easley (bass) and Tom Roach (drums). "I knew what each player would bring to the table. They exceeded that."

He says his only real hope for this music was that people would get to hear it. "Streaming has made it impossible to recoup the monetary bit, so I just released it into the world, with hope that people hear and enjoy it," he says. "I wanted to make music that felt good. The world today contains enough tension and aggression already."