Flea has been playing bass for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for over four decades, and that is the thing everyone will tell you about him. What is less often mentioned is that he grew up playing trumpet, fell in love with jazz as a teenager in Los Angeles, and spent most of his adult life with a trumpet sitting in the corner as a kind of deferred dream. Honora, his debut solo album released this week on Nonesuch Records, is what happens when that deferred dream finally gets taken seriously.

The result is better than it has any right to be. That is not a backhanded compliment. The concern going into an album like this is always the same: it will be a rich musician’s vanity project, competent enough but lacking the hunger that makes jazz worth listening to. Honora sidesteps that trap almost entirely, and the reason is that Flea chose his collaborators wisely and then got out of his own way.

The album features six original compositions alongside covers of Funkadelic, Frank Ocean, Jimmy Webb, and Ann Ronell. The ensemble is genuinely contemporary, built around producer and saxophonist Josh Johnson, guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Deantoni Parks. These are not session hires there to flatter the headliner. They are some of the most forward-thinking voices in Los Angeles jazz, and they bring a looseness and intelligence to the record that makes Flea’s playing feel contextually right rather than isolated.

The Funkadelic cover is the immediate standout. “Maggot Brain” in its original form is built around Eddie Hazel’s legendary guitar solo, one of the most emotionally devastating minutes in rock history. Flea takes that melody on trumpet, and he does not try to replicate it. He finds something quieter inside it, something more interior. It works in a way that should not be possible.

Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” gets transformed into a blissful jazz standard, which sounds on paper like it would be insufferable. It is actually one of the warmest moments on the record, partly because Flea’s trumpet tone is genuinely beautiful and partly because the rhythm section underneath has absorbed the groove of the original without copying it.

Thom Yorke appears on “Traffic Lights,” contributing vocals, piano, and synth. It is unsettling and warm in equal measure, the kind of track that sounds like it should not cohere but does anyway. Nick Cave sings on a version of “Wichita Lineman” that leans into the song’s famous ache without overselling it.

There are moments where the album feels like it is still figuring itself out. Some of the original compositions are more sketched than fully realized. But Honora earns its place not as a curiosity or a celebrity side project but as a genuine artistic statement from someone who has spent a long time waiting for the right moment to make it.