Center of the River’s debut recording, released February 6, 2026, is already making its way outward, drawing responses like “the first great album… of 2026,” and “a fantastic album that takes you on a musical journey down the Mississippi.” One early listener called it “a collaboration between three phenomenal multi-instrumentalists,” which is true—but only part of the picture.

Center of the River is a New Orleans-based trio—David Buchbinder, Mark Rubin, and Michael Ward-Bergeman—working in what might best be called Americana Art Music from the Mississippi River—music rooted in the river’s cultural currents, where groove traditions rooted in Black American music, folk song, and improvisation meet.

The project grew out of a shared pull toward the Mississippi—not just as geography, but as a lived musical system. From St. Louis down to New Orleans, the sounds that developed along its banks—Blues, Gospel, early Jazz, country song, riverboat calliopes, and other harder-to-name currents—form the ground this music stands on. Each of the three has spent years inside related traditions, learning directly from musicians and culture-bearers, and that experience shapes the music from within.

What comes out of that is a body of mostly original songs, with a few traditional pieces, where groove and song are inseparable. The rhythm leads. Even with minimal drums, the feel is carried collectively—internal, shared, and always in motion. The music lives somewhere between song and improvisation, shaped as much by feel as by form.

The trio brings together a wide instrumental palette—trumpet, accordion, guitar, banjo, bass, alto horn, flugelhorn, tuba, percussion, and a few unnameable sound-makers—and long musical lives that have intersected with artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Hilario Durán, Osvaldo Golijov, Rhiannon Giddens, the Treme Brass Band, the Bad Livers, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, and many others. What matters more than the list is a shared approach: deep listening, curiosity, and a willingness to follow the music wherever it leads.

At heart, Center of the River is a conversation—with each other, with the musical languages of the river, and with the larger current those traditions continue to shape. It’s music grounded in place, but not fixed in it.

The project began taking shape in 2022 and has since been heard in New Orleans, Toronto, Vancouver, and in a special collaboration at the University of Minnesota.

You can listen on Spotify or YouTube, and find the project on Facebook and Instagram (easily accessible through the icons on your the left side of this page).

Right click on flyer to download a copy

Center of the River performing with the University of Minnesota Choir under the direction of Yulene Velasquez