Kind Folk is a new jazz supergroup that lives up to the promise its first time out, with ‘Why Not.’

The return of Jason Stein’s Locksmith Isidore with ‘After Caroline’ is a welcome one because these guys don’t slouch for a second in taking on Stein’s challenging material.

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.

The all-originals ‘Ours’ and all-covers ‘Theirs’ are both bulls eyes from Thumbscrew and a strong way to persuade the quality label Cuneiform to not give up the fight.

David Ake puts decades of experience behind ‘Humanities,’ creating what will certainly be one of the best mainstream jazz releases of the year.

You won’t gain any academic knowledge about the human heart from listening to ‘Heart Tonic,’ but it’s clear Caroline Davis invested all of hers.

You know that great musicianship and creativity are always in store for Avi Granite 6’s strong return but little else can be anticipated, and that’s the main joy of ‘Orbit.’

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.

Varied, inviting, unpredictable but never jarring, the Mark Zaleski Band’s ‘Days, Months, Years’ is anything but boring.

Rez Abbasi and his potent Invocation band have demonstrated with ‘Unfiltered Universe’ that creativity and originality is more than just ideas and knowledge, it’s about vision.