Ivo Perelman and cohorts prove that sax, trumpet, vibes and stringed instruments can coalesce around spontaneous ideas, if you get the right guys together.

André 3000 didn’t enter the studio intending to make an ‘Alice Coltrane’ or ‘Jon Hassell’ album, he simply followed his muse. If only more high profile artists did this.

Satoko Fujii, Taiko Saito and Yuko Oshima are three wellsprings of creativity who as Trio San joined forces to find new ways to make uncommonly compelling music.

Ivo Perelman is up to his usual tricks o ‘Molten Gold,’ making up melodies on the run with trombone great Ray Anderson for four amazing improvisations.

‘Catching Ghosts’ with Majid Bekkas and Hamid Drake is a fine keepsake from Peter Brötzmann’s recent comeback, capturing an old soul taking chances with a fire still in his young heart.

‘Oceans And’ intrigues because it’s a meld of sounds that don’t normally go together, and delights because it goes together so well in the hands of Tim Berne, Aurora Nealand and Hank Roberts.

The the music of ‘MYSTIC’ by the expanded Sun of Goldfinger ensemble The Sunny Four lives entirely in the moment while justifying multiple moments re-hearing it.

Ivo Perelman’s one-on-one improvisations with 12 distinct reedists ‘Reed Rapture In Brooklyn’ is the story of an ambitious project told through a box set of recordings now being told through a full-length documentary.

The unworldly communion of Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp is a sacred musical bond. During ‘Live In Carrboro,’ Jeff Cosgrove uncannily knows just how to not only keep that bond intact, but strengthen it further.

Not many people can create music that strongly evokes the sounds of a century ago but remains experimental. That comes naturally to Ross Hammond.