Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II Sets Banjo, Violin and Two Saxophones Beside the Keyboards
6 min read
Phil Lentz Presents... Vol. II Sets Banjo, Violin and Two Saxophones Beside the Keyboards
Eleven Original Songs in Under Half an Hour, Written by a Former Reporter and Speechwriter
Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II fits eleven original songs into less than half an hour, with Phil Lentz on keyboards and six players around him. Banjo, violin and two saxophones sit beside guitar, bass and drums, and the songs move between jazz, pop and folk. The album came out on 22 November 2024 as his second record.
Phil Lentz’s I Remember the Early Days is in the playlist below, and his full run of coverage sits on his artist profile. Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II came to BestMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Have a listen, then read on for the players behind it.
Lentz has a long career in words behind him. He worked as a political reporter, a speechwriter and a public relations executive, and he has published two novels. Today, however, he composes, and he plays piano with jazz workshop groups in Manhattan.
Keyboards, Banjo, Violin and Two Saxophones Make Up the Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II Line-Up
Lentz composed all eleven songs. He arranged them with Dennis Harte, who also produced the album and plays guitar and banjo. Wolfgang Lagomarsini is on bass and Dave Young is on drums. Red Heller and Richard Philbin both play saxophone, while Bob Cohen adds violin.
That line-up widens the palette of the debut. In comparison, the 2022 band was keyboards, guitar, saxophone, bass and drums. This time, the banjo and the violin are the new colours, and a second saxophone also joins the first.
In fact, the track credits show how Lentz shares the record out. Philbin is the featured player on Bebopping Along, December Song and Coda, so he frames the album at both ends. Heller, by comparison, is featured five times, from I Remember the Early Days and The Circus to One Little Drop of Justice. Meanwhile, Cohen is featured on Play Your Melody, Chimes and Prairie March. Finally, Harte steps forward on Honky-Tonk Blues, Blues À La Carte and Prairie March, where he shares the billing with Cohen.
The Song Titles Point to the Forms
The titles also show the forms Lentz writes in. First, Bebopping Along opens the record with a nod to bebop. Later, Honky-Tonk Blues and Blues À La Carte both put the blues in the title, and Prairie March borrows a march. Overall, seven of the eleven tracks run between two and three minutes. Only Play Your Melody and One Little Drop of Justice pass four, and Coda closes the album in under two.
Norah Jones showed how far a piano-led record between jazz and pop can travel. Her debut, Come Away with Me, came out on Blue Note in February 2002 and went to number one on the Billboard 200. Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II works on a much smaller scale as an independent release, but it sits in the same space between the jazz club and the pop song.
Kostadin Kamcev Recorded and Mixed Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II at One Studio in New Jersey
The sessions took place at Studio Mozart in Little Falls, New Jersey. There, Kostadin Kamcev recorded the album and then mixed it. Afterwards, Tom Hutten of Bionic Mastering mastered it, while Kat Georges designed the sleeve and layout.
That is a shorter chain than the debut had. In 2022, on the other hand, the recording was split between Kaleidoscope Sound in Union City and Studio Mozart, and the mix happened in Brooklyn. So for the second album, one engineer handled recording and mixing in one building. Meanwhile, Hutten returned for the mastering.
The location has a personal side too. Lentz comes from Bloomfield, New Jersey, a short drive from Little Falls, and he lives in New York City today.
Steely Dan are the classic case of songwriters building records around hired players. For Aja in 1977, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen tried different combinations of session musicians, close to 40 in all. That album won the Grammy for Best Engineered Recording. By contrast, Lentz works with a steady circle. Harte, Lagomarsini and Heller all played on the debut, and Young, Philbin and Cohen are the new names.
That steadiness also fits a loose, homespun record of short pieces, where each song states its idea and moves on.
Where to Hear Phil Lentz Presents… Vol. II, From Spotify and Bandcamp to The Bitter End
The full album plays in the Spotify player at the top of this page. It also streams on Apple Music, Deezer and Amazon Music, and Bandcamp sells it as a download and on CD. In addition, the Indie Dock Music Blog has already featured it.
Live, Lentz plays keyboards in bands and jazz workshops at New York rooms such as Silvana’s, The Iridium, The Cutting Room and The Bitter End. For example, on 1 May 2026 the band played I Remember the Early Days and Play Your Melody at The Bitter End, and both clips are on his YouTube channel.
Since then, a third album has arrived in spring 2026, with ten more songs and most of the same team, including Harte as producer and Kamcev at Studio Mozart.
It suits listeners who like jazz in song-length pieces, with pop and folk close by. It also suits anyone who follows independent albums that cross genres rather than settle in one.
BestMusic.News curator team: “I Remember the Early Days is where we would start. At under three minutes it shows how much a small band can fit into a short original song, and the rest of the album keeps the same economy.”
Follow Phil Lentz on Spotify, Apple Music, Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok and Bluesky, and find more about his music on his official site.
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