Saxophonist Braxton Cook to play at Songbyrd on April 12

“As my therapist would put it, so many foundational, situational things that used to feel so secure had suddenly been uprooted,” says Cook, who is now 32 and will perform April 12 at Songbyrd. “I started to feel shaken to my very core. It took a lot of prayer, therapy, journaling, conversations with my family, and just some alone time with everything to really parse it out.”

In the end, it was music that allowed Cook to make sense of everything. His new album, “Who Are You When No One is Watching?,” is the product of his turning some of those journal entries and conversations into songs. This helped him to come to grips with the seismic turns his life was taking and also, by externalizing them, to release some anxiety about them.

“The project just became healing for me,” he says. “That’s what music always has been, but even more so this project. Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten older, and things have gotten heavier and a bit deeper.”

His music has taken on more heft and depth, too. Even before his 2009 graduation from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Cook had built a reputation in the D.C. area as a jazz prodigy. His fleet and fluent bebop was a regular and popular presence on District bandstands like Twins and HR-57. After two years at Georgetown University (where his father was a law professor), Cook transferred to New York’s prestigious Juilliard School to hone his craft.

But if he played straight-ahead jazz in the clubs and the classrooms, Cook had other ideas brewing. The saxophonist grew up on gospel, soul and hip-hop, and even in his youth was searching for ways to blend those styles. His time in New York, both on the music scene and immersed in the city’s rhythms, gave him the inspiration and confidence to stand up for that vision.

“My place, sonically, in the world of jazz has always been something I’ve thought about and talked about — with mentors and people with opinions all around me — since I was a kid,” he says. “But ultimately, you have to find your own voice and make your own decisions. It’s no different than the whole idea of adulthood, really.”

For Cook, “Who Are You When No One Is Watching?,” his fourth full-length album, is the confluence of those currents of musical and personal maturity. While it’s instantly recognizable as progressive jazz circa 2023, it also hews closer to mainstream R&B than any music he’s made yet.

Along with his alto saxophone and other acoustic instruments, the album uses electronic textures, hip-hop- and trap-inspired beats, plus Cook’s own vocal — an element he’s been developing since at least his 2017 album “Somewhere in Between” — which is not only credible but downright appealing.

The record also makes substantial use of guest artists. These include Chicago trumpeter Marquis Hill, Jamaican vocalist Masego and, most prominently, Cook’s own parents, who appear in snippets of recorded conversations with their son.

“It’s a part of jazz tradition to honor your past and your history to really be able to forge forward and know where you’re going,” Cook says. “And that’s part of moving forward as a man, too.”

The album’s title works on multiple levels as well. It refers most obviously to an oft-repeated quote about the definition of personal integrity. But it’s also a comment on a modern world where it’s increasingly rare to find that no one is watching.

“There’s an over-curation that exists in our lives: Essentially, our phones have become the new television,” he remarks. “And there’s a disconnect sometimes between the personality we’re trying to maintain on those screens and then who we really are.”

It’s worth noting as well that Cook has undergone much of this evolution far removed from the view of his longtime acquaintances, in D.C. as well as New York. He’s become who he is while no one was watching.

But the saxophonist chuckles at the notion that audiences at Songbyrd might find a different Braxton Cook looking back at them from the stage.

“Come on, man. People that know me, they’re going to say, ‘Yeah, same old,’” he says. “I’ve still got that love at the center of it all. That’s where my music comes from.”

April 12 at 7 p.m. at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. $15-$18.