Pat Metheny and John Zorn? What are both musicians famous for?

Patrick Cress’ brainchild Mercury Falls is back again three years after they debuted with a project I previously opined that in their alchemy of jazz and alt-rock, “these guys figured it out right from the start.”

The turn of the millennium was a time of artistic resurgence for UK guitar lord Allan Holdsworth; with its stripped down arrangements and group improvisational freedom, Holdsworth got more from less out of Sixteen Men of Tain (2000).

Steve Jenkins may be a bassist, but he’s seemed to have learned a lot from guitarists with which he’s worked, like, say, Vernon Reid and David Fiuczynski, in how to craft music around his chosen instrument and his style of playing it.

Whenever I describe a jazz artist as unique and eccentric, using odd meters and irregular note progressions, that means I’m describing a whack jazz artist about 99% of the time. Reedman Daniel Bennett on the hand belongs in that one percent.

The allure of Danish-Swedish quartet David’s Angels comes from their uneasy truce among chanteuse jazz, avant-Prog and indie rock, and the tension that creates

Lorenzo Feliciati more often than not finds himself making collaborative kind of music instead of solo projects. A virtuoso at both electric and acoustic bass, Feliciati needs no help, but recognizes that sometimes, getting together with other creative musicians results in an especially creative outcome.

Pat Metheny is such an accomplished figure that it’s easy to overlook his cohorts in the Metheny Group — making this new live document an endlessly instructive journey.

Anthony Branker plays no instruments on his latest record Uppity. Actually, he’s never performed on any of his six releases, so I can’t discuss what a great instrumentalist or vocalist he is.

Bobby Selvaggio heads up two different kinds of bands, but he solved a potential dilemma of which band to record for an album by simply including sessions by both combos on the same record.