New Orleans-born jazz pianist Sullivan Fortner has released his sixth album, Leave That in There, an unfiltered and wide-ranging record made after he abandoned his usual meticulous, self-edited approach to recording. The 39-year-old, a three-time Grammy winner who recently received the $300,000 Larry J Bell award, says the album confronts the lasting trauma of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated his home city in 2005 while he was an 18-year-old student, and reflects a broader artistic stance against self-censorship.

The album's title comes from a moment in Spike Lee's 2006 documentary When the Levees Broke, in which a woman leaving her flooded car tells someone to "leave that in there" rather than retrieve her purse — a phrase Fortner turns into a manifesto for keeping rather than hiding difficult material. Musically, the record spans Latin acoustic piano, Hammond organ, Monk tributes and Moog synths, opening with a track rooted in Louisiana's slavery-era sugar trade and closing with a wordless tribute to his late friend Linda Payne. Fortner recalls the panic of watching the disaster unfold on CNN from his Ohio dormitory, unable to reach his family until a brief call confirmed they had evacuated safely to Baton Rouge.