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

Whit Dickey’s deep trust in his bandmates and himself was greatly rewarded for his highly improvisational quartet outing ‘Astral Long Form: Staircase in Space.’

An instrumentalist of the highest order, Michael Bisio is underrated as a leader and composer. ‘MBefore’ is but the latest instance where he excels in those areas as well.

Progressive music has moved in the direction suggested long ago by ‘Junk Magic’ but as Craig Taborn revisits these ideas, it’s clear they remain unique in an increasingly crowded field.

At casual glance, the Matthew Shipp Trio’s new album could be read as ‘Symbiotic Reality.’ An engaged listen convinces us that should be the actual name.

Once again, Ivo Perelman follows a path that the listener has never gone down before – or the musicians, for that matter.

A quarter century of musical association between Matthew Shipp and Mat Maneri continues with ‘Conference of the Mat/ts.’

Ivo Perelman’s ‘String 1’ with Mat Maneri, Jason Hwang and Mark Feldman is a quest to fully realize the juxtaposition of wind and vibrations and take it as far as it can go.

Conceived as it was played, ‘Vessel In Orbit’ is unpredictable, melodic and has form built around emotion not formal structures. When it’s done by such elastic artists like Dickey, Shipp and Maneri, it all comes together beautifully.

Ivo Perelman came up with a very logical way to follow up the successful pairing with violist Mat Maneri titled ‘Two Men Walking’…by adding one talented woman violist to the two men for this latest walk.