‘Invisible Threads’ offered me the first chance to listen to saxophonist and clarinet player John Surman in a long time – and all I can say is, “wow.”

After a long fermenting period, Roscoe Mitchell and Matthew Shipp’s ‘Accelerated Projection’ is nevertheless just as relevant today as it did when the music was pulled from thin air more than twelve years before release.

Quoan’s ‘Fine Dining’ is a feast of so many ways two horns and a rhythm section can generate excitement and keep us guessing what happens next.

Like Wild Card itself, Clement Regert’s ‘Life Stories’ encompasses an exciting range of styles – from hard-bop and Afro-Latin, to New Orleans and raw funk grooves.

Mark Wade, named one of jazz’s Top 10 bassists in the 2016 ‘DownBeat’ readers poll, joins Preston Frazier to discuss his second album ‘Moving Day.’

None of the great talent assembled here gets stretched near their limits for this Desertion Trio excursion, but this diversion is for an altogether different mood.

It was easy to find jazz records that deserved a year-end salute; maybe ‘too’ easy. The heavy lifting came from figuring out which stood above the rest for this Best of 2017 list.

‘Organ Monk Blue’ sustains Gregory Lewis’ intriguing concept of a Thelonious Monk on the organ. It didn’t hurt that this time Lewis revitalizes the blues along the way, too.

As a protege of Connie Crothers, Jeff Pearring learned the importance of finding his own voice. ‘True Story’ is what happens when that inner voice comes pouring out.

Richard Lloyd Giddens Jr.’s ‘Mimosas’ brings in disparate colleagues and disparate composing pens, and molds them into a united musical statement that one can sense portrays the complexion of its singular leader.