Beautiful Life, the latest album released by Sandy Hook resident, educator and renowned jazz artist Jimmy Greene, is a musical journey that even the most underexposed or inexperienced music consumer can fall in love with.

It apparently has the same effect on music critics and jazz aficionados. Greene’s moving celebration of his late daughter Ana Grace’s life was recently nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Jazz Instrumental Album, and Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals for the song “When I Come Home.”

The album opens with a joyous noise, the sound of his immediate family and in-laws singing and playing around the holiday table during a December 2011 visit to Puerto Rico. The same number, “Saludos,” concludes with the beautiful but haunting voice of Ana Grace singing along as brother Isaiah plunks the melody of “Come Thou Almighty King” on the family piano.

What follows is a mix of robust and somewhat sparse arrangements, all conceived and produced by Greene and featuring an amazing array of talents including Greene’s own gold-standard rhythm section (Renee Rosnes, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Lewis Nash, drums), augmented at various points by guitarists Pat Metheny and Jonathan DuBose, Jr; pianists Kenny Barron and Cyrus Chestnut; vocalists Kurt Elling, Javier Colon and Latanya Farrell; spoken word from Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose; a 13-piece string ensemble from Hartford Symphony Orchestra, as well as an accomplished children’s choir.

In a conversation with Greene shortly after the December 7 Grammy announcements, he affirmed that every song on Beautiful Life originated after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings three years ago. Ana Márquez-Greene was one of the children who died that morning.

“There were a couple that were written, that I had performed before, but without lyrics,” Greene explained. “None had ever been recorded in the way you hear them on the album. ‘When I Come Home’ was one of those. ‘Prayer’ and ‘Ana’s Way’ were the others.”

In the days and week’s after 12/14, Greene admitted that his daily routine of practicing and song writing understandably was put on hold as he, his wife Nelba Marquez-Greene, and their son Isaiah all began to try and come to grips with their devastating loss.

But he eventually returned to the process.

“I hesitate to say that I use music to a certain end, but music is such a part of me,” he said. “But as there are words to express certain feelings and emotions, there is a musical language, too. I read a quote that said ‘I write because I must,’ and for me, I play and arrange and perform music because I must. It’s just what I do.”

Greene admitted, however, that neither the creative nor production process brought him any direct relief from his grief.

“The healing process for me is independent of the music making process,” he said. “Music is a language, however, that can communicate when words can’t. For me, making music is wonderful. It’s a way of expressing and reflecting beauty through sound. That in and of itself is an amazing thing, and all the songs on the recording were meant to reflect Ana’s beauty and the beauty of her life.”

When the project was done, Greene said the music resulted in a loving statement from father to daughter, “some sort of representation of the beauty of Ana’s life that she embodied every day.

“Healing is a long process and there’s still a lot of rawness there,” he said. “The process of making the album was very helpful because there were things in me I couldn’t express in words, but could express in music. It was a humbling experience and a huge honor to be recognized with the Grammy nominations — an unbelievably big honor that makes me so grateful for all the hard work and generosity of everyone involved, from the music business people to the musicians.”

Greene said the recording process began in late February 2013 and wasn’t completed until August 2014, and that several sessions involved a lot of give and take in the complex process of mixing and finishing the tracks.

“I really felt this album had to be just right, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than that,” he said.

While several of the songs on Beautiful Life underwent some level of transformation, Greene said several of the simplest songs stayed very true to their original concepts.

“The songs that were just recorded as a duo with Barron were accomplished during one afternoon session during the summer of 2013,” he said. “While a lot of thought was given to working in the samples on ‘Saludos’ at the beginning of the album, and the home video recording of my kids performing at the end of the track, that session with Pat Metheny was fairly short and pretty much completed while we were in the studio. The music just kind of flowed from the first note.”

Once the larger groups and songs were in process, Greene said his producer hat came out along with some key support on one of the Grammy nominated tunes, from college friend and fellow Connecticut artist Javier Colon.

“We went to The Hartt School, and we had talked about playing music together, although we never recorded together,” Greene said. “But he gave us the perfect vocals for that song.”

Proceeds from the sales of Beautiful Life are being split between the Greene family’s Ana Grace Project and Hartford-based The Artists Collective.

“I studied at The Artists Collective as a youngster, and it changed my life. It was there that I decided to pursue a life as a musician,” Greene said. “It has done an amazing job providing access to the arts in neighborhoods where kids and families may not be able to afford that kind of training and a connection to the arts."

Beautiful Life is available at most music retail outlets as well as on Amazon and iTunes. The 58th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony will be February 15, 2016.