The wordless performances on key recordings from Duke Ellington to Pink Floyd are sublime, ethereal, haunting, atmospheric, anything but ordinary.

Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte feed human musical ideas into computer algorithms using an elaborate set of rules and a dash of randomness to generate fully notated compositions.

Contemporary jazz often gets slammed for being too smooth or emphasizing melody in lieu of improvisation. Reza Khan’s ‘Imaginary Road’ puts the lie to that.

The quality and care put into four new reissues from Chet Baker’s Riverside era make them must-haves for the serious jazz audiophile.

“Hunting Heads” starts yet another chapter in David Garfield’s on-going ‘Box’ series – this time with a musical call out to Herbie Hancock.

There’s nothing loud or audacious on Jakob Bro’s ‘Uma Elmo’ because it doesn’t have to in order to leave an impact. Through subtlety comes sublimity.

‘Sensitive’ documents the gig where Tim Berne’s Hardcell unit got started, as well as Berne’s fruitful association with keyboardist Craig Taborn.

Like other Scott DuBois works, ‘Summer Water’ is sagacious and spiritually deep, only this time, only DuBois’ guitar is needed for those qualities to shine through.

A spirituality invades Ricardo Pinheiro’s guitar/voice album ‘Caruma.’ The world is right, the music beautiful.

Like the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of burying treasure to be found later, ‘MMBC Terma’ by Michael Bisio, Michael Monhart and Ben Chadabe is a treasure of freeform jazz that’s emerged after almost fourteen years hidden away.