The cover image for Tensegridad, the second album from the Argentinian SLD Trio, looks like a dolmen and it fits the music that both feels ancient and modern. While some types of avant-garde music seek to re-invent the language of music to the point of total estrangement, the strength of the SLD Trio lies in its ability to make sounds, rhythms and melodies that are experimental and inventive and yet almost feel like old folksongs. A new inscription written on an old stone.

With Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, the Bang on a Can All-Stars show off their blazing speed, polyrhythmic virtuosity and all-world versatility in a return to the core Bang on a Can sound - an uncategorizable supermix of classical and electric instruments that is part classical ensemble, part rock band, and part jazz sextet. The album is the first in a decade that features the All-Stars exclusively, rather than as part of a collaborative project. Each of the pieces on the double-CD calls upon a different kind of virtuosity, demonstrating the range of musical abilities and experiences arguably unique to this ensemble. Recorded in New York City, all of the music on Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (including the arrangements of the works by Conlon Nancarrow) were written for and premiered by the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

This set of Sun Ra solo piano works was performed and broadcast at WKCR Radio, on July 8, 1977. WKCR, the largely student-run station of Columbia University, has a decades-long tradition of fine jazz programming. During Sun Ra's career, he made so many appearances at the station that he probably had a front door key. Sometimes he performed (with or without members of the Arkestra), other times he would present rare and unreleased recordings. This solo piano set was rebroadcast several times over the years, and is documented in The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra (Robert L. Campbell and Christopher Trent, 2nd ed., 2000), entry #252.

La musique non écrite est une musique sans papiers ; en soi, c’est un acte politique. La formule est de Bernard Lubat qui sait de quoi il parle en matière d’engagement dans un mode d’expression artistique libre. Même chose pour Louis Sclavis, avec lequel il signe cette magnifique capture d’un instant unique. Les deux hommes se côtoient depuis plus de trente ans, et aux côtés d’autres grands musiciens, ils ont été les précurseurs du free-jazz en France, participants actifs à une « résistance intense aux avatars hagards des musiques à vendre ».

Maltese e Moncada sono due fra i più importanti musicisti jazz che la Sicilia abbia avuto negli ultimi decenni, e suonano insieme sin dall’82. «Monadi», è il il titolo del progetto che presenteranno a Messina, tratto da una loro pubblicazione monumentale che comprende 4 CD, uscita nel 2017 per Labirinti Sonori, attraverso la quale “danno voce alla loro fratellanza artistica” come scrive il critico Alberto Bazzurro sulla rivista Musica Jazz. In questo concerto Stefano Maltese suonerà sax soprano, alto, e tenore; saxello, C Melody sax, flauti, clarinetto, clarinetto basso, pianoforte, percussioni, mentre Antonio Moncada sarà alla batteria e alle percussioni.

Renowned trumpet player Hans Kennel writes of this new release: As a trumpet player with many years of experience I am still interested in the music of younger colleagues. In the summer 2016, by pure coincidence I met and heard Silvan Schmid play and I was both impressed and touched by his very special playing. I was pleased to hear a trumpet player who plays different. Silvan does not sound out of a school. In his early years he already has his musical dialect His beautiful tone, his very sensitive articulation and phrasing are an earcatcher. Brilliant technique, but no flasher. He integrates, without giving any of his personal assets away, into a given situation. Great fulfillment he obviously finds in an ideal way in his GAMUT projects. A fascinating group of astonishing young musicians that creates an ambient where improvisation and composition mutually dissolve into a resolution.

Percussive Mechanics: there's nothing mechanical about it. The young Canadian Anna Webber has been highly praised by such illustrious colleagues as pianist Jason Moran. Here, with a seven-piece ensemble of highly talented young musicians, she shows what exciting and unexpected sounds she can create.

Following up on his Balkan-Jazz Folk-Opera Rousilvo (2018), Macedonian composer/multi-instrumentalist Dine Doneff presents IN/OUT as the second release on the neRED music label in cooperation with ECM Records. The 21-minute long album has been referred to as “A Soundscape Theater for Double Bass and Tapes” and was recorded live on July 1, 2016 in Domagk Ateliers, Munich as a part of the vernissage for: In Searching of a Common Ground #2, an exhibition of eleven contemporary Macedonian artists. As a play in one act, IN/OUT is a dialogue between a soloist and a soundscape of pre-recorded compositions and field recordings made in several European cities, which runs through the performance. The question of what is IN and what OUT creates a dialectical conversation between the actor/improviser and the composer/thinker. Common ground, Division within, Contradiction, Homecoming, Unbelonging, Disquiet and Exile arise in succession as subjects upon which an intensive dialogue takes place.

This album is rooted in the personal. Westbrook's enduring creative partnership with his wife, the singer, lyricist and painter Kate Westbrook is represented by two songs they wrote together. Starcross is a rail station nearby the Westbrook home in Devon, near Plymouth where his creative life began all those years ago. His title track is dedicated to the tenor saxophonist Lou Gare, whose death in 2017 was a particular wrench. Starcross Bridge is an intricately woven network of musical and personal references. –Philip Clark

Recorded live at New York's Judson Hall in 1965, Spirits Rejoice is one of Albert Ayler's wildest, noisiest albums, partly because it's one of the very few that teams him with another saxophonist, altoist Charles Tyler. It's also one of the earliest recordings to feature Ayler's brother Don playing an amateurish but expressive trumpet, and the ensemble is further expanded by using bassists Henry Grimes and Gary Peacock together on three of the five tracks; plus, the rubato "Angels" finds Ayler interacting with Call Cobbs' harpsichord in an odd, twinkling evocation of the spiritual spheres. Aside from that more spacious reflection, most of the album is given over to furious ensemble interaction and hard-blowing solos that always place in-the-moment passion above standard jazz technique.

Double Up, Plays Double Up Plus features Ensemble Double Up, who first appeared on Old Locks and Irregular Verbs, which was voted the best jazz album of 2016 in both the NPR and Jazz Times Critics Polls. The New York Times declared that release “just as easy to picture in Pulitzer contention” and NPR called it “a masterpiece.” On board are holdovers Davila (tuba), Hoffman (cello), Filiu (alto saxophone, alto flute), Macdonald (alto saxophone), Weinrib (drums, percussion), but this time featuring the remarkable three-concert grand pianos of David Virelles, David Bryant and Luis Perdomo. The interaction between the three pianists lie at the heart of this piece, performing an intricate contrapuntal dance of varying attack, register, and density.

Anguish is the 2018 self-titled debut album by Anguish. This was released by RareNoise.

Recorded on August 26, 1965 (and not released until after his death), Sun Ship was the final recording by John Coltrane's quartet with drummer Elvin Jones, pianist McCoy Tyner, and bassist Jimmy Garrison. Pharoah Sanders would join the group the following month, and Tyner and Jones would depart in January of 1966 to be replaced by Alice Coltrane and Rashied Ali. It is also one of the saxophonist's most intense taped performances. After nearly four years together, this band had achieved a vital collective identity. When Coltrane moved toward metrically free styles of rhythm and melody (with tunes often based on one chord or a short series of notes as themes), the quartet's rhythmic pulse and collective interplay evolved accordingly.

The Complete "Is" Sessions were recorded during Chick Corea's tenure with Miles Davis, along with bassist Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette. Recorded over three days in New York, the final product came out as two albums on different labels "Is," "This," "Jamala," and "I," were issued as Is on Solid State, and the remaining cuts came out as Sundance on Groove Merchant "The Brain," "Song of the Wind," "Converge," and the title cut. Blue Note has assembled not only the two released recordings on this double-CD package, but the alternate takes as well, to offer a complex, very remarkable portrait of the chemistry that occurred when that trio engaged Woody Shaw, Bennie Maupin, Hubert Laws, and additional drummer Horace Arnold.