In addition to being a flat-out great listen, Brighter Days documents the evolution of Chicago-area tenor saxophonist and composer Jarod Bufe’s working quartet since its auspicious 2018 debut New Spaces, a program of exquisitely crafted and impeccably executed original compositions developed over years of regular live performances at jazz-friendly clubs like FitzGerald’s in historic Berwyn, Illinois. With guitarist Tim Stine, bassist Matt Ulery and drummer Jon Deitemyer once again onboard, Bufe leads his crack band of like-minded A-listers through fresh material that benefits from their hard-earned cohesiveness, which they’ve managed to refine over an especially challenging stretch of years — from the steady-building momentum of pre-COVID gigs through the current, post-COVID era as a stronger, more mature ensemble demonstrating heightened awareness, a broadened artistic sensibility and a more emotional presentation overall. This new collection of tunes is clearly inspired by pandemic lockdowns and reflections on the role of music in expressing and providing hope during dark times, with telling titles like “Midnight” (a minor vamp with an angular melody that conjures a slightly ominous “Bohemia After Dark” mood), “The Forgotten Before” (an uplifting jazz waltz with great solos by Ulery and Stine), the bluesy Joe Lovano-meets-John Scofield vibe of “Loss Of Agency,” the funkified groover “Fighting For Hope” (with a snappy backbeat courtesy of Deitemyer, a master of tasteful crispness and top-of-the-beat propulsion), “Goodnight, My Brooklyn Prince” (an elegiac tribute to the late saxophonist Mark Colby, Bufe’s close friend and frequent collaborator) and “Eclipse” (which alternates between repetitive-riff mania and sweet rides of cymbal-tapping release) — not to mention the uptempo swing and forward-facing optimism of the album’s title track. Brighter Days is a shining example of the type of high-calibre art that ultimately takes shape when team players stick together and creativity triumphs over adversity.

The boldness of Living Ghosts lies not in its selections but in their groupings. One of the foremost piano stylists in European jazz, Michael Wollny — who recorded Living Ghosts live last year with his longtime trio mates, bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Eric Schaefer — is known for the bold omnivory of his repertoire. But it’s one thing to have compositions by both medieval maestro Guillaume de Machaut and alt-rocker Nick Cave in one’s book (as the Wollny Trio does, from 2014’s Weltentraum and 2022’s Ghosts, respectively). It’s another to have them both on the same track.

The tracks are here called “sets,” and each contains two — in one case three — compositions. The shortest of these is 12½ minutes and features the one piece new to Wollny’s repertoire, Jeff Babko’s “This West” (the original recording of which featured Lefebvre), juxtaposed against “Willow’s Song,” a folk-ish gem from the 1973 horror film Wicker Man. It works because Wollny casts the two disparate pieces in similar moods, so that the latter feels like a natural outgrowth of the former. In fact, all of these “sets” work, but not always for the same reason. Consider the hybrid of Wollny’s “Hauntology,” a quasi-minimalist piece; Duke Ellington’s “In A Sentimental Mood,” which the trio reworks into something dissonant and menacing; and Jon Brion’s “Little Person” (another soundtrack piece, from Synechdoche, New York), which has the delicate wistfulness we usually associate with the Ellington tune. Why does this cohere? I don’t know, but it does.

The best answer seems to be that the trio’s collective personality functions like glue. That might be the only explanation for the pairing of Cave’s “Hand Of God,” here worked into a frenetic boil that little resembles Cave’s recording, with Machaut’s ars nova masterpiece “Lasse,” rendered as faithfully as a jazz piano trio can render a 14th-century motet while playing a tu-way-pocky-way beat. What should be oil-and-water is instead magic — but don’t ask why. Just go with it.

There is such an incredible amount of interaction going on throughout this album that the title is a slam dunk. First, there’s the interaction between the 3 Cohens — clarinetist Anat, trumpeter Avishai and saxophonist Yuval — just a sister and her two brothers drawing on a lifetime of laughing, playing, sharing meals and simply being family together. They finish each other’s musical statements. They blend their instruments into beautiful threads like a homemade patchwork quilt.

Add in their interaction with the famed WDR Big Band, an organization known for its inventive collaborations with everyone from Steve Gadd and Dave Stryker to Joe Zawinul and Patti Austin. Under the conduction of Bob Mintzer, the Cologne, Germany-based ensemble has earned its way to the top of the big band pantheon in today’s landscape.

This album presents musicianship of the highest order. The live set (performed to a packed auditorium in 2022 at the Kölner Philharmonie) kicks off with a wickedly swinging “Shufla de Shufla” (Aramaic for “best of the best”) that shows off Avishai’s massive skill and versatility as a trumpeter, into a masterful solo by Yuval and off to Anat’s silk-soaked blues clarinet lines. This particular interaction spills over to include WDR’s pianist, Billy Test, who is up to the challenge of bringing this conversation to a tipping point. All three Cohens bring tunes to the program. Avishai penned “Shufla de Shufla” and the sweetly mournful “Naked Truth Pt. 2.” Yuval wrote the bouncy “Catch Of The Day (For A&M).” And Anat brings in the great show closer “Footsteps & Smiles,” previously heard on her album Triple Helix. But adding to the interaction, just as producer George Martin was often considered “the 5th Beatle,” we have someone who could be called “the 4th Cohen.” Composer and arranger Oded Lev-Ari grew up with the Cohen siblings and has been part of their inner orbit from the beginning. Here, Lev-Ari arranged all of the tunes for big band, went early to rehearse with the WDR and stepped in to conduct the concert. His tune “Trills & Thrills” brings an entirely different element to the proceedings: a sense of the grandeur of modern big band writing. The program features two classics as well: Nick LaRocca’s “Tiger Rag” and Gerry Mulligan’s “Festive Minor.” The sum total of these interactions? A rare opportunity to hear amazing soloists, maybe the best big band on the planet and the breadth of what happens when large ensemble music and family sit down for an evening-length, full-course “meal.” Bon appetit!

Post Graduation Fees is the third release from KADAWA, the Brooklyn-based collective power trio of guitarist Tal Yahalom, double bassist Almog Sharvit and drummer Ben Silashi that’s been disrupting preconceived notions of avant-garde jazz and hard rock via their outrageous and inspired roughhousing since coming to America in 2014. KADAWA creates original instrumental compositions marked by cosmically complex arrangements that make bold use of rhythmic counterpoint, cerebral melodies, unorthodox chord progressions, thrilling improvisations, spacious sonic palettes comprising clean and affected psychedelic tones, and a raw underlying aesthetic that manages to find that perfect sweet spot between the dead-serious and the irreverently humorous. At times explosive and aggressive, celebratory and engaging, dreamy and soothing, their music draws from a vast arsenal of stylistic influences and instrumental techniques and resides in range of tempos conjuring caffeinated urgency, floating dreaminess, steady-driving grooves and easygoing strolls. These three bad boys met in the Stricker academic program at the Israeli Conservatory, Tel Aviv; eventually they all moved to New York together, releasing their debut, KADAWA (featuring trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, keyboardist Micha Gilad and trombonist Matt Bumgardner on a few tracks), in 2017. That was followed in 2023 by a three-tune EP written and recorded in collaboration with the deeply unconventional singer, songwriter and producer Grey Mcmurray titled Downward Jewel. The chops-sporting band takes its name from an edgy variation of a game of tag that Yahalom, Sharvit and Silashi used to play as teenagers back home that involved chasing, kicking and shouting — a fun, apropos way to describe their musical and inner-personal dynamics. With Post Graduation Fees, KADAWA shows that it has enough intergenerational appeal — and more than sufficient momentum — to continue pushing the limits of jazz, rock and improvised music for at least another decade to come.

Veteran guitarist Brad Shepik has long gone without his propers. Hard Believer, the second album by his world-fusion Believers trio with electric bassist Sam Minaie and drummer/percussionist John Hadfield, should go a long way toward rectifying that. If nothing else, the sheer stylistic range the material evokes from Shepik and company is cause for celebration.

If I emphasize Shepik’s presence, it’s not because he’s Believers’ leader; Hard Believer’s warm, jazzy opening title track crystallizes this, putting the guitarist into accompaniment of Minaie’s lead lines. Hadfield is no sideman either, leading from the back on the angry glitch-rocker “Broken English” and the Persian-spiced reggae groove “Ranglin.” Shepik, though, on the New York jazz scene since the early ’90s, is the eldest and best known of the group (and an erstwhile employer of the other two in his Human Activity quintet): the one who has most earned the stardom that eludes him.

That’s even more true on Hard Believer. The nature of the instrumentation puts Shepik by default on the front line; even so, he is the spice in the Eastern funk “In The Weeds” (perhaps reminiscent of the Balkan sounds Shepik once explored with Dave Douglas and Jim Black in the Tiny Bell Trio), the chill in the Metheny-ish “Falling Grace” (where he also offers hints of Jerry Garcia in his single-note lines), the sting in the blistering “”Rocinante.” He is also the featured voice on “Corduroy,” a moody slow-burn with strong echoes of Radiohead. With Minaie and Hadfield providing a steady, heavy bulldozer roll, Shepik concocts glowing, often burning shapes like a low flame (with occasional leaping tongues). It’s a fusioneer’s performance, with a rock mien but a jazz-bred vocabulary, and while it’s enough to establish his mastery, the trio’s grim integration shows there’s enough brilliance to go around.