7/10

In its raw essence, 'A Live Family Rayunion 2025' is a reminder of why Ray's Music Exchange mattered in the first place. Recorded during a sold-out performance at Cincinnati’s historic Woodward Theater, the six-track live album captures the progressive funk-jazz collective doing what they have always done best: stretching songs, trading energy and turning musicianship into something wonderfully communal.

The band built their reputation during the late-90s jam-band boom, but their sound was always broader than that label suggested. Jazz-fusion, funk, progressive rock and improvisation all feed into a style designed to move as much as impress, and the new album preserves that balance beautifully.

The current core of Brad Myers, Michael Mavridoglou, Nick Blasky, Jason Smart and Matthew Hawkins is joined here by a younger generation of Cincinnati players, including saxophonist Josh Kline, trombonist Spencer Merk and members of Afrobeat-funk outfit Ernie Johnson from Detroit.

The now expanded horn presence pushes the arrangements towards something bigger and more explosive, while the rhythmic foundation keeps everything grounded in groove. Many of the compositions come from founding keyboardist Paul Hogan, linking the band's original creative identity with a performance that feels very much alive in the present.

Ray's Music Exchange have always been defined by the relationship between stage and audience, and this recording captures that sense of music being passed back and forth rather than delivered in one direction.

Thirty years on, Ray's Music Exchange still sound curious, muscular and completely at home inside the unpredictable space where jazz, funk and improvisation meet.