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.

If you’re looking for two saxophones sounding badass, swinging and flat-out fun, drop the needle on Horns Locked, the new recording by tenormen Nick Hempton and Cory Weeds. This is an old-school blowing session between two friends having a blast. Backed by Nick Peck killin’ it on the Hammond B-3 and Jesse Cahill driving the beat on drums, the band launches into this “tenor battle” with a slammin’ version of James Moody’s “Last Train From Overlook” that get the feet tapping from the downbeat. The whole album is just smiles and bluesy grease with a heartbreakingly slow “Polkadots And Moonbeams” aimed right at your heart. The tenor compatriots — Hempton from New York, Weeds from Vancouver, Canada — dig into the work of their heroes, no doubt. Dexter Gordon’s “Soy Califa” brims with the energy of trading fours and playing unison lines. Gene Ammons’ “The One Before” grooves along on a cloud of B-3 magic. But both artists bring in their own work, which lives up to the rest of the set. Hempton’s “Change For A Dollar” serves as an extreme blowing vehicle and both of these guys charge hard, playing fierce and dropping in a few pearls. Was that a glimpse of “Mona Lisa” there? Weeds offers up “Conn Men,” and if you know about saxophones, you know exactly what he’s talking about. It’s a sweet, swinging number. Weeds’ arrangement of “When You’re Smiling” is perfectly placed near the end of the set. And “Loose Ends” closes this jam session with exactly the kind of toe-tapper you’d expect for on such a roller coaster of tenor madness. Recorded partly live in the studio and partly in front of a sold-out crowd at Frankie’s Jazz Club in Vancouver, Horns Locked is more of a swinging love fest than a cutting contest. These are two masters of the tenor saxophone enjoying the history of that instrument and adding some of their own. With Peck and Cahill at their side, this is a fiercesome foursome that should be playing heavily on the festival circuit this summer. They are just that much fun. “The album is a tonic for uncertainty,” said Hempton in the press materials. “Simple songs, unambiguous melodies and hard driving rhythms to bolster us in precarious times.” Drink it up. Nick Hempton and Cory Weeds are serving up something special here.

Mark Turner’s We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads is a self-portrait of the artist as a perpetually maturing improviser/player of the highest order. Recorded in Copenhagen in late 2019 and produced by guitarist Jakob Bro, the album is a solo performance of melodies, rhythmic explorations (both slow and fast) and implied harmonies that gives an inside perspective on what it means to be Mark Turner. It conveys an up-close and personal depiction of the struggles and rewards of being a serious artist devoted to crafting a uniquely distinct voice, and the focus, dedication and honesty it demands.

We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads brings the listener inside Turner’s instrument. Pads thud, keys click and notes occasionally warble as Turner quests his way through two of his own compositions, three pieces by Bro and “Misterioso” by Thelonious Monk. We hear him in a naked, pure context, with nothing else but the natural ambience of the room he’s playing in. Hear his tongued attacks, his breath accents, his slurred bits of phrasing, the plosive pop of his altissimo and the unselfconscious swallow of his larynx. Intuit when he’s about to end each track just by paying attention to the way his breathing changes, the way his ideas and patterns wind down or wrap up. It doesn’t even take an experienced or discriminating ear to sense these captivating subtleties; you can just tell that resolution is imminent if you immerse yourself in this music and simply let it flow and turn in whatever direction Turner takes. Truth lies within.

One of the recording sessions with Turner and Bro that eventually led to We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads is depicted in the 2022 documentary Music for Black Pigeons, which premiered at the 79th Venice Biennale and was screened at cinemas and film festivals worldwide. A 14-year project by Danish directors Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed, the film also portrays Bro’s creative interactions with various other prominent figures in the global jazz realm, including Paul Motian, Lee Konitz, Midori Takada, Bill Frisell, Craig Taborn, Joe Lovano, Larry Grenadier, Andrew Cyrille, Palle Mikkelborg, Joey Baron, Thomas Morgan, Arve Henriksen and Manfred Eicher.

There’s a prevailing notion in modern jazz circles that Turner has been one of the more interesting and important voices on the tenor saxophone for the last quarter-century or so. We Raise Them To Lift Their Heads provides further evidence of such hard-earned, and heartfelt, esteem.