With ‘Collodion,’ Anthony Wilson managed to turn what would be a stressful situation for lesser musicians into a cozy listening experience.

Michael Formanek, Anthony Pirog and Mike Pride produce the kind of inspired music that comes from jamming – even if the record wasn’t made that way.

Sprung from the prolific mind of Rob Mazurek, the Exploding Star Orchestra started out in 2007 reaching toward towering heights of artistry and attaining them. Most amazingly, they still manage to do that today with ‘Lightning Dreamers.’

No artist is pushing harder to expand jazz’s frontiers than Makaya McCraven, and ‘In These Times’ opens up further possibilities of how the music form can progress upward.

Mia Garcia and Hailey Niswanger of OHMA made a pure chilled vibe record with ‘Between All Things,’ arguably the best such record of 2022.

With ‘Parallel Motion,’ the Yellowjackets continue to defy the tendency of even the best bands to run out of steam and go stale.

With the inspired assortment of musicians backing bandleader Mike Rivard, Club d’Elf’s ‘You Never Know’ sounds like the go-to world fusion album of 2022.

With ‘Thisness,’ Miles Okazuki and his nimble, astute and funky quartet take yet another significant artistic step forward.

Every Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber project was treated as a major work by the late Greg Tate, and with ‘Angels Over Oakanda,’ he leaves intact his legacy of leading a band of boundless imagination and chops.

There are now lots of practitioners of the electro-acoustic, rock-oriented style of jazz that Eivind Aarset and a few others pioneered. He’s still the best.