When a band from Austin, Texas, drops music into the offices of DownBeat, there are expectations. The band Atlas Maior, hailing from that acclaimed music city, blows those expectations away. No Texas twang, no guitars, no songs about late nights and lost women. Instead, this quartet delivers art jazz from the edge and sound explorations of the highest order. The instrumentation is, well, unexpected. Josh Peters slings an oud or lutar instead of a guitar. Joshua Thomson performs on alto saxophone and flute. Josh Flowers finds open space on his upright bass fiddle. And Gray Parsons delivers the sparsest of grooves on drums. The music they perform pulls influences from around the musical globe. Latin tinge, Middle Eastern maqam and avant-garde jazz seep into the group’s sound, and it’s all on display with Palindromlar. The album offers a fascinating listen, always leaning toward sparse arrangements with plenty of room for exploration. Take, for example, “Las Conchas,” a sometimes foreboding yet playful composition where Peters and Flowers enter the tune with a quirky-cool call and response on oud and bass, respectively, before Thomson and Parsons join in, the drummer taking a slow groove for Thomson’s rapid-fire alto work. Nothing is hurried; each band member listens as much as they play, entering only to add or amplify what is being played in the moment. The band’s third album, Palindromlar grew out of a tour to Morocco, including a three-night residency in Essaouira. The music has a mystic, noir quality. It’s out there, no doubt about it, bridging culture and breaking down musical walls in a most beautiful way.

Love Letters is JD Allen’s attempt at creating something new by applying an old idea. The tenor saxophonist augments his chordless trio with bassist Ian Kenselaar and drummer Nic Cacioppo by adding a special-guest fourth (as he does on nearly every album), this time pianist Brandon McCune, in pursuit of eight tried-and-true ballad standards. This is unfamiliar territory for Allen, who usually spelunks his own originals — and, more recently, has dived into more experimental textures as well.

Promoted as “a stripped-down take,” it isn’t really such: McCune’s piano is uncommonly plush and billowy, seeming to take up more harmonic space than it really does. Hence even his light comps behind Allen, as on “I Get Along Without You Very Well” or “My Buddy,” fill up the corners of one’s ears like fog from a machine. That’s to say nothing of his solos. The one on opener “You Are Too Beautiful,” for instance, is so full and lush that it even widens the sound of Cacioppo’s brushes and adds meat to Kenselaar’s lean bass tone. It does the same thing to Allen; on “Where Are You,” we can hear his sleek sax sound widen and open like yeast to meet McCune where he’s at.

Yet Allen still remains Allen, his sax remains sleek and incisive. On “My Buddy,” he wields it like a switchblade, lunging in for slicing underhand attacks and quick, precise movements. If it gains a certain softness around the edges of “Stardust,” it retains a Hemingway-esque approach to phrasing: get in, get it said, get out. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, putting Allen in this balladeering torch-song context doesn’t change him; it makes him more the same than ever.

A triangulation of keyboardist Craig Taborn, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Marcus Gilmore — musical omnivores with indelible voices that reject categorization — Trio of Bloom is a rocking and reflective embodiment of sonic creation and spontaneous hybridization, a spirited flurry of inventive interaction among three of jazz’s most singular artists. This bold new configuration, with a self-titled debut on the convention-bucking Pyroclastic label, was instigated by the famously cross-pollinating producer David Breskin, who asked each musician to bring in a selection of original compositions, both new and repurposed, as well as a cover for the group to have their way with. Trio Of Bloom starts off with an explosion of sorts, as the group transforms Ronald Shannon Jackson’s 1980 jazz-rock shuffle “Nightwhistlers” into a fusion-scorched thriller that roils with overtones of crime-scene danger. Taborn’s “Unreal Light” shimmers and drones with a reverent air before morphing into an angular groove that casts aside any semblance of overly serious pretense. Gilmore’s “Breath” floats in a timeless watercolor world of dreamy enchantment. Cline overdubs a gripping bass guitar line on his tune “Queen King” (which references the Afrobeat riff of “King Queen” from the Nels Cline Singers’ Breskin-produced 2010 album Initiate). On “Diana,” from the 1975 Wayne Shorter/Milton Nascimento collaboration Native Dancer, the trio uses recording studio amenities as creative fodder, with Taborn on celeste sounding as sentimental (and haunting) as an old-time music box, Cline conjuring atmospheric, hypnotic loops and Gilmore tuning his toms to thunder like orchestral timpani. The 10-minute free-improv “Bloomers” serves as a centerpiece of sorts, with the trio deeply focused in stream-of-consciousness interplay drawn from deep wells of genre-spanning knowledge and influence, ultimately discovering a gold mine of shared affinities and cultivating crossbred blossoms of exceptional beauty.

Sachal Vasandani is one of the most fascinating vocalists on the improvised music scene today. Take for instance his beautiful album Best Life Now, which came out earlier in the year on his own Patron Saint Records. Now, he’s come out with a beautiful, stripped down version of songs from that album called Best Life Now—Acoustic Sessions EP with saxophonist Dayna Stephens and guitarist Charles Altura. The wordplay on the record’s title tune may be the best example of Vasandani’s creative gifts. He sings the verse of “Best Life Now” as if he’s a jazz-infused Paul Simon, playing with time and meter to tell his story of saying he’s living his best life, but not quite convinced that those words ring true. His is art that straddles the boundaries of musical genre, quietly erasing the lines with a sweep of his smooth tenor vocals. “Don’t Give Up On Me” comes in as a quiet, thoughtful plea from an imperfect but well meaning narrator. His take on Sade’s “Lover’s Rock” shoots straight at the heart, begging for a warm embrace. The six songs on Best Life Now–Acoustic Sessions EP clock in at just a bit over 20 minutes, like an album side to quiet the soul after a long day. The music is simple and understated, but with a depth and beauty that stick with the listener. This is Vasandani at his best.

Ah, Gary Bartz, you smooth, sly devil! On Damage Control, his first recording as a leader in a dozen years, the master alto saxophonist transforms 10 r&b hits from decades ago into sweetly grooving, jazz-infused gems that will have you tapping you toes and smiling about that time when … . These are songs Bartz sings in the shower and around the house, songs that help him enjoy good times and get through bad times. And from his vantage point, they’re songs we could all use in these vexing, complex times. In DownBeat’s November issue cover feature on Bartz, he said he never feels safe in the United States, and “it’s getting worse.” And there’s the rub: These sweetly salty ear worms are meant as an aural balm for today’s challenges. It works. Whether blowing over Curtis Mayfield’s “The Making Of You” or singing DeBarge’s “Love Me In A Special Way,” this is Mr. Bartz, all heart and even more soul, with his NTU Troop, a group named after the Bantu, meaning unity of all things. He dives into some of the best known songs of all time, perhaps to show us all how much we have in common instead of what drives us apart. His vocals on Babyface’s “Slow Jam” are heartwarming. His incantation of “Music never lets me down” on Earth Wind & Fire’s “Fantasy” is warming. Recorded in a North Hollywood studio run by producer Om’mas Keith (Bartz’s Godson), the sessions became a party of jazz celebrity with the band including pianist Barney McAll and drummer Kassa Overall as well as guest spots turned in by Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, Theo Croker, Keyon Harrold and Nile Rodgers, Spaceman Patterson and Shelley fka DRAM. The results deliver a mix that is beyond genre, and superbly satisfying to the ears.

Oh, man, does Ed Partyka know the big band tradition backwards and forwards. He’d just about have to, as a protégé of large ensemble virtuoso Bob Brookmeyer (whose 1981 album Composer–Arranger gives Partyka’s record its title). Indeed, the epic opener “Do As I Say … (Not As I Do),” a Partyka original, wears the Brookmeyer influence — and perhaps that of another Brookmeyer protégé, Darcy James Argue — proudly on its sleeve.

A lesser craftsman would make that his manifesto and the mold for the entire album’s worth of material. But Partyka, born and raised in Chicago but now resident in Graz, Austria, has too much range, and too many high-caliber collaborators (17 great players from across Europe), to let it go at that. He immediately offsets “Do As I Say” with an enchanting, breezy Latin orchestration of Charlie Parker’s “Klactoveedsedstene” that shows how deeply he knows his stuff. At times it sounds just a Freddie Green guitar line away from the Count Basie New Testament Band (Partyka has no guitarist), at times like the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra (with a Simon Harrer trombone solo that might itself be a homage to Brookmeyer’s seat in that ensemble).

Neither is Partyka a slavish disciple, even on a tribute album. His arrangement of “Dienda,” despite its being a Kenny Kirkland tune, simply sounds like Ed Partyka, especially in his use of brass — both in solos (there’s a heavenly French horn one, courtesy of Swiss player Linus Bernoulli) and in backgrounds (with flugelhorn and trombone spinning a beguiling contrapuntal web behind Florian Trübsbach’s alto solo). His closing original showpiece “G.G.’s Last Dance” uses those same brass chops to construct a careful slow-burn, climaxing in another Harrer trombone solo before creeping, with almost unbearably tension, to a resolve. More, please.