There’s so much to say for youthful ambition. There’s also so much to say about 23-year-old saxophonist Emma Rawicz, who is loaded with it, in addition to a maturity that’s well beyond her years. As she says in a feature article coming out in DownBeat’s January issue, “In a couple of years I’ve gone from being a normal university student to suddenly being on international stages, playing four countries in four days and being at home hardly any of the time.” Not that she’s complaining, just stating fact. After self-releasing her first album in 2022, while still a student, she was scooped up by ACT Music for her sophomore release, Chroma. Both recordings proved to be a very good start to her career. But with her latest release, the fusion-adjacent Inkyra, Rawicz comes in full-bloom, an artist with a great vision and voice that uplifts the spirit and taps the soul. The opening track, “Earthrise,” soothes as a call to listen. It’s a minute-long meditation that slides into “Particles Of Change,” an anthemic romp beautifully arranged for her sextet, which includes Gareth Lockrane on flutes, David Preston on guitar, Scottie Thompson on keyboards, Kevin Glasgo on electric bass and Jamie Murray on drums. But when Rawicz solos on tenor saxophone, the tune lifts into the stratosphere. She shows off her serious chops in building a soaring improvisation that, at its conclusion, left this listener saying, “Whew!”

If ever you’ve imagined what Sonny Rollins must have sounded like, playing in solitude (between trains) on the Williamsburg Bridge, ArchMusic might be the soundtrack to those fantasies — if you adjust them down an octave or two. Multi-reedist Andrew Hadro, who specializes in low-end winds (bass clarinet, baritone and bass saxophone), made this music in not-dissimilar conditions. During the isolation of COVID (and a couple of years after) he played each night under the Cleft Ridge Span, the concrete arch bridge in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. His recordings capture not just the sound of his axes but of the resonance and reverb they created inside the arch — and how different instruments and weather conditions affected them. Read like an experiment in acoustical physics? Well, it doesn’t sound like one. Hadro piles his playing with soul, blues and intrigue, so that the sonics become not waves to be examined but atmosphere to be relished. The opening “Out There In Orbit” feels like one has stepped into a film noir, echo and drone standing in for shadow and Dutch angles. The feeling only intensifies on “Old Olmsted Steady,” “Sustainable” and “Bari de Lune,” going into overdrive when Hadro breaks out a standard like “Out Of Nowhere” or “Stella By Starlight.” He also sometimes accompanies himself with a shruti box, an Indian drone instrument that can add a faintly exotic flavor but is no less compelling. Hadro does occasionally play alto sax, most notably on “Spanning Cleft Ridge” and the closing “Voix a Vaux.” But it’s not always easy to tell within this wash of sound (and the vast range he applies to every instrument), and it’s not terribly relevant. The ambiance is the thing, and outside our own romantic dreams of jazz history, there’s no other ambiance quite like what ArchMusic generates.

A hard-working multi-instrumentalist, composer and master of a wide range of jazz styles, Mark Sherman has long ranked among the top vibraphonists in the world. After releasing a series of four well-received albums that showcased his previously unrevealed virtuosity on the piano, Sherman returns to the vibraphone on Bop Contest, featuring an all-star lineup of bassist Ron Carter, pianist Donald Vega, drummer Carl Allen and guest trumpeter Joe Magnarelli. The project has its origins in Sherman’s personal connection to the 88-year-old Carter, a colleague on the faculty of the Juilliard School who happens to be the most recorded bassist in jazz history. Bop Contest marks the first time Sherman has enlisted Carter to play on one of his 22 recordings as a leader — and it gets its name from the title of Sherman’s first effort at writing a bebop tune. Recorded at Van Gelder Studios, it’s an homage to the straightahead jazz tradition, a foundational and formative influence upon Sherman and each of the musicians in this dream-team lineup. In addition to being a longtime member of Carter’s Golden Striker Trio, Vega takes inspiration from two of Sherman’s favorite pianists: Kenny Barron, with whom the vibraphonist recorded the duet album Interplay in 2015, and the late Cedar Walton, two of whose compositions are included on Bop Contest. Allen and Carter have crossed paths over the years, and the drummer has worked frequently with Sherman, including on his debut as a pianist, 2019’s My Other Voice. Magnarelli, a longtime friend and collaborator of Sherman’s, was called upon to add his trumpet and flugelhorn to a pair of Sherman originals. The title track is a classic bebop burner with a serpentine vibes-trumpet unison melody sparking vigorous solos and culminating in a friendly round-robin exchange that amounts to an elite-level cutting contest. Sherman’s second original is the lilting jazz waltz “Love Always Always Love.” Album opener “111-44,” by Oliver Nelson, was originally recorded on the saxophonist/arranger’s 1961 album Straight Ahead with Eric Dolphy and Roy Haynes. The Walton pieces are “Bremond’s Blues” (from the 1987 release Cedar Walton Plays, which also featured Carter on bass) and “Martha’s Prize,” from Walton’s 1996 album Composer. Sherman’s take on “My One And Only Love” is a lively bossa nova seasoned with tasty, bebop-informed reharmonizations. The album closes with Sherman playing an eloquent duet with himself on “Skylark,” luxuriating in the depths of the timeless standard with a fresh harmonic approach that perfectly suits his signature lyrical approach — on both vibes and piano.

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.