The challenge for listeners to keep up is also central to the thrill of listening to ‘Cool With That’ by the improvised music supergroup East Axis.

“What’s Going On” by bluesman Boo Boo Davis and the ElectroBluesSociety isn’t the Marvin Gaye classic, but it’s liable to move your soul, too.

Kiefer’s satisfying rendering of this classic Crusaders tune is a fine entry point to their sublimity, as well as the L.A.-based keyboardist’s next album of the same name.

Michael Bisio, Kirk Knuffke and Fred Lonberg-Holm are artistic rebels as Robert Henri was, but their music isn’t outside just for the sake of being outside.

‘Confabulations’ wasn’t made with the public in mind, and that might be why this makes such a great entry point for the avant-garde side of Duck Baker.

On ‘Telepathy,’ long-established veterans Denny Zeitlin and George Marsh act like young upstarts, showing the jazz world a fresh new approach.

As Anthony Braxton continues to push forward one of America’s greatest art forms, he also takes opportunities to demonstrate just how jazz got to be so great.

‘Be Ready When I Call You’ is the unvarnished blues that comes off earnestly, because Guy Davis is a seasoned storyteller and a messenger of hard truths, balanced by a humble wit.

Here is the video premiere of swinging “Thinking of Benny,” a song tenor sax ace Joel Frahm wrote honoring one of his saxophone heroes, the living icon Benny Golson.

As is always the case on a Claudio Scolari Project album, the looseness in their approach on ‘Cosmology’ guarantees a freshness and fluidity in the music that refuses to be stifled by rigid structures.