Horace Silver’s ‘Silver In Seattle: Live At The Penthouse” is a very satisfying snapshot of an important artist in the middle of a lengthy period backed by major jazz big guns in their own right.

We learn from the expansive ‘Flashpoints and Undercurrents’ that John Surman’s journey to great heights in jazz was underway very early on.

Recorded in 1966 at their peaks, ‘Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs’ finds jazz giants McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson freed from studio constrictions.

‘Maximum Swing: The Unissued 1965 Half Note Recordings’ with the Wynton Kelly Trio only bolsters the case that Wes Montgomery is the greatest jazz guitarist of all time.

Bob James’ ‘Once Upon a Time’ helps to complete our understanding of an artist far more adventurous than his popular works come close to suggesting.

This constitutes the most significant addition in a very long time to the catalog of – and insight into – the brilliant but enigmatic Eric Dolphy.

Before any of those seminal recordings by the AACM family could happen, Roscoe Mitchell’s ‘Sound’ needed to.

The long-forgotten ‘Both Directions at Once, The Lost Album’ is nonetheless as gratifying as many other John Coltrane albums from the Impulse! era; indeed, it holds its own against the entire, history-making discography.

Albert Ayler’s violent alchemy of Africa and Europe imbues ‘Copenhagen Live 1964’ with historical importance because more than fifty years hence, these ideas put into practice sound as radical today as they did back then.

‘I Called Him Morgan’ is a compelling, up-close documentary chronicling of the self-destructive lifestyle of jazz prodigy Lee Morgan.