S. Victor Aaron

At the beginning of 2024, the experimental trio Jupiter didn’t exist and by September of that year, they had a fully formed album out of music that takes a fresh approach to freeform music using jazz and rock concepts. The self-titled Jupiter

Lumination album features Dan Loomis on acoustic bass, and Ernesto Cervini on drums. Frahm’s trio is essentially a spinoff of Cervini’s celebrated Turboprop sextet, which additionally has a piano and two more horns. In this runt form, the playful, sympathetic discourse among the three is looser and more telepathic. Frahm is a tenor sax force unto himself but generously allows his bandmates to shine as much as he does, with Loomis and Cervini even contributing tunes alongside Frahm’s own originals.

Jazz’s foremost super trio Thumbscrew is out with another stunner. Michael Formanek (bass), Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums, vibraphone) are three of the most widely respected and busiest musicians in jazz of the last ten or so years, but still manage to combine to put out singularly great music at a regular pace, doing so again in late September of 2024.

The Necks' 'Bleed' is briefer but there remains plenty of time to insert many small intriguing new twists into their incomparable brand of modern, minimalist music.

Keyboardist Alister Spence is an open-minded artist from Australia keen on expanding the frontiers of improvisational, experimental music, and he’s joining forces again with like-minded counterparts from Japan. Kira Kira is a quartet that grew out of a musical symmetry and a duo between the Fender Rhodes/electronics maestro Spence and the innovative pianist/composer Satoko Fujii. With Natsuki Tamura (trumpet) on board and a changing cast of drummers, Kira Kira opened up new vistas for each of its members, all of whom had spent their entire careers making music not heard before.

'Good Intentions' is an astonishing start from saxophonist and composer Alden Hellmuth, who's still absorbing the more daring sides of jazz.

The ace harmonica player who lent his skills to Sunken Condos has continued making music over these last twelve years, and not just with a mouth harp: he knows his way around composing, singing and playing guitar, too. He continues to make records under his own name and do sideman work for some of the biggest names in the biz like Sting, Barbra Streisand, Jaco Pastorius, Carly Simon, Chaka Khan, Peggy Lee and the O’Jays. And then there’s a steady stream of work from movie scores and commercials and concerts. So yeah, he’s been keeping busy.

Regardless of what one might think of the political messages of Devin Gray, his musical messages on 'Melt All Guns II' are undeniably mighty.

Keith Jarrett's trio triumph 'The Old Country' is an equal companion to 'At The Deer Head Inn,' not an inferior second helping.

For 'Dusk and Dawn,' the Rich Halley 4 deliver attitude and panache missing from much of jazz while respecting everything about the idiom that made it great.