Black Excellence: Ashley Jackson
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5272887/ashley-jackson-harpist-new-album
Some of Ashley Jackson’s earliest memories took place at church services she attended with her grandmother. The rising harp player leaned into those experiences for her sophomore album Take Me to The Water. Spirituals, and their coded messages of freedom for the enslaved, are at the heart of her arrangements of works by Alice Coltrane, Margaret Bonds and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.