The often dazzling and awe-inspiring landmass and waterscape formations resulting from the natural world’s inexorable transformations occurring over vast timescales can prove artistically inspirational, especially for artists whose creative juices are set flowing by the considerable...

The Swiss composer and jazz pianist Marc Perrenoud has released a delightfully hip new trio record entitled Vestry Lamento. Produced by Double Moon Records Label & Challenge Records International, the album was first released in Europe in October of 2013, and has recently been made...

Saxophonist and composer Chris Potter’s triumphant, expansive, visionary and boundary-blurring new release Imaginary Cities marks his second as leader for the ECM label, following 2012’s “The Sirens.” The creative impulse here stems, in part, as Chris himself puts it, from a...

Billy Hart has done as much as anyone alive to master the vocabulary of jazz drumming. Mr. Hart (b. 1940) has been the beat behind over 500 albums by artists ranging from Sam & Dave to Pharoah Sanders. With The Montgomery Brothers and Jimmy Smith in the ‘60s, Miles Davis and Herbie...

Vijay Iyer should be familiar to both jazz enthusiasts and people interested in creative new music of all sorts. He has collaborated with artists from Amiri Baraka to John Zorn on record labels from Asian Improv to Sunnyside. It is not only his piano playing and composing that has won him a...

The French jazz composer and percussionist Xavier Desandre Navarre has released a promising first album as bandleader entitled In-Pulse, on the Jazz Village label. He has assembled a tremendous combo behind him that enlists two upright bass players, Stéphane Kerecki and Bruno Rousselet, and...