Curtis Hasselbring heads up a couple of bands and on the spy-themed Number Stations he rubs them together and watches the sparks fly.

Listening to single-take forty-plus minute group performances is not a casual affair, it’s embarking on an odyssey.

And so we reach the final piece of the Ivo Perelman/Matt Shipp trilogy of April, 2013. The Edge is where Perelman fronts Shipp’s widely renowned trio for the first time ever (though he has performed with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Whit Dickey on separate occasions).

The Chicago-based duo from Poland Mikrokolektyw (a Polish play on the word “micro collective”) only makes music out of thin air, and like a skilled magician pulling a rabbit out of thin air, makes it look so effortless and fluid.

Serendipity is, to put it succinctly, a forty-three minute improvisation among Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver.

It was only about a year ago when we last apprised a new album by the restless improvisational saxophonist from Sao Paulo, Ivo Perelman. Since that time, Perelman had put out another three albums, all trio records.

Oh no, not the 1974 Linda Ronstadt hit. Not even close. Rather, it’s a non-hit from 1967, by Latin soul godfather and vibraphonist Harvey Averne with the lead vocal sung by doo wop specialist Kenny Seymour

As a insatiably open minded guitarist and composer, maybe it was inevitable that someday Sean Moran would make a record featuring his nylon six-string guitar in a setting alien to that instrument.

To paraphrase Joe Lovano, FUSK doesn’t so much play free jazz, as set jazz free. Performing Super Kasper in a series of first takes, with three tracks presented as complete improvisations, this amalgam is simply too enterprising to fit into any one category.

One thing that Fred Anderson had shown us in his last years was that the original AACM guys can still make vital, risk-taking music of real consequence; these guys who were at the forefront of jazz in the 60′s never retreated