This creative burst mostly came with help from jazz luminaries, but ‘The Omnichord Real Book’ still sounds like the singular Meshell Ndegeocello.

Sprung from the prolific mind of Rob Mazurek, the Exploding Star Orchestra started out in 2007 reaching toward towering heights of artistry and attaining them. Most amazingly, they still manage to do that today with ‘Lightning Dreamers.’

No artist is pushing harder to expand jazz’s frontiers than Makaya McCraven, and ‘In These Times’ opens up further possibilities of how the music form can progress upward.

Here is the premiere of the song “Root” by jazz pianist Christina Galisatus.

Bassist and producer Paul Bryan’s ‘Cri$sel Gems’ is a very consistently satisfying set of retro-fusion tracks.

Matt Mayhall went for an instinctual approach on ‘Fanatics,’ took a few chances and with the right guys to assist him, emerges triumphal.

Here is the streaming premiere of “Batida” by the re-formed Chicago Underground Quartet.

Cobbling together something new from things old is not a Jeff Parker invention. But his unique take on this approach makes ‘Suite For Max Brown’ so much more accessible.

Makaya McCraven’s ‘Universal Beings’ is a handmade mishmash of sounds that isn’t alien, but is never completely familiar, either.

Few are in a better position than Jeff Parker to bring jazz into the 21st century by combining it with 21st century music forms with all the finesse of jazz intact, and he does just that with ‘The New Breed.’