Released in May 2026, the track is a jazz-adjacent composition that resists easy categorisation — which is, of course, exactly its greatest strength. Yulia, Dallas-based and hitherto known within circles that appreciate pianists of serious technical means, has here produced, arranged, composed, and performed the keys work herself. That accumulation of credits is not vanity; it is precision. The vision, one suspects, had to be hers from beginning to end, because it is so thoroughly and unmistakably itself.
The musical architecture is sophisticated without being cold. Yulia's piano and synthesiser work provides a harmonic foundation that feels simultaneously rooted and searching — she has absorbed a great deal from the traditions of contemporary jazz and gospel-inflected composition, yet one never gets the sense of a student showing off their reading list. The playing has interiority to it. She phrases, rather than merely executes.
Then there is Jackiem Joyner. The Grammy-nominated saxophonist contributes what might be the recording's emotional centrepiece: a performance that understands its precise function within the whole. He does not dominate. He breathes. His saxophone enters as though it had always been there and departs leaving a shape in the air. This is the mark of a musician who knows that restraint, in the right context, is the most powerful option available.
The rhythm section — David Haynes on drums, Sekou Bunch on fretted bass, Tim Bailey Jr. on fretless — creates a pulse that is supple rather than driving. They support without pressing. Jay Soto's guitar work is similarly calibrated, adding colour at the perimeter. Notably, none of these contributions were made in the same room; the recording happened remotely, each musician working from their own studio before being brought together at Luminous Sound Studio by engineer Tre Nagella, a four-time Grammy winner whose credit list one imagines does not lack for impressive entries. The mix is clean, spacious, and warm — the stereo field breathes in a way that makes the distance between musicians an irrelevance.
Spiritually, the track is earnest in a manner the contemporary listener may find either bracing or deeply unfashionable, depending on their temperament. Yulia has spoken of love as "a divine gift from God, the source of all true love, healing, and reconciliation." It is a message that refuses irony, that declines to hedge. At a cultural moment when division is, tediously, the currency of every conversation, this refusal feels less naïve than it might once have done. The music itself earns the sentiment. One does not feel lectured; one feels invited.
That distinction — between lecturing and inviting — is where the record does its most significant work. The composition proceeds by way of inclusion rather than declaration. The tempo does not insist. The harmonics do not resolve too quickly into comfort. The piece, in its better moments, holds open the possibility of something rather than announcing its arrival.
Yulia is an artist with a clear creative voice, formidable collaborative instincts, and something genuine to say. "Let's Agree To Love" is a statement of intent — the work of a complete musical mind arriving, fully formed, into the light.
