Here are four distinctively different projects that fall, to one degree or another, under the jazz umbrella—from the Dan Tepfer and Miguel Zenón duo, Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, Billy Mohler’s chordless quartet, and Lafayette Gilchrist’s sextet. They offer distinctly different musical experiences, but they all share one thing: no one else sounds anything like any of them.

Dan Tepfer and Miguel Zenón
Internal Melodies (Main Door Music)
A review
Pianist Dan Tepfer earned a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh, and saxophonist Miguel Zenón turned down a full engineering scholarship from his native Puerto Rico’s Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez, which is to say that the two gentlemen apply advanced mathematical gifts to the art of jazz improvisation. Add technical mastery of their instruments, deep feeling, and a joyful willingness to pursue their inventive musical impulses, and you have two of the foremost improvisers on the planet. Oh, and they compose, too. Internal Melodies, recorded several years ago, features four compositions from Zenón (three never previously recorded), four from Tepfer’s pen, two collaborative compositions, and one each from György Ligeti (the gloriously rendered etude “Fanfares”) and Lennie Tristano (“317 E. 32nd St.”). The opener, “Soundsheets,” begins with a saxophone glossolalia that promises a transporting experience, and the album delivers on that promise. From Tepfer’s baroque-ish title track (he knows his Bach) to the Latin battle between militarism and romance in Zenón’s “La Izquierda Latina Americana” (which is also a sly reference to the left hand of Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo), melody and feeling are front and center. Lyrically abstract, often dense but always light-footed, the music beautifully communicates the rhythmically adept duo’s commitment to clarity of feeling and their superlative musicality.

Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet
Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt)
A review
As she did on her first Fire and Water Quintet release, For the Love of Fire and Water (reviewed here), synesthete pianist/composer Myra Melford turns for inspiration to the elemental play of light on water in painter Cy Twombly’s Gaeta Set (for the Love of Fire & Water). On the beautifully recorded (thank you, Nick Lloyd) Hear the Light Singing, she creates five new “insertions” for the original suite that have been written specifically for the members of her stunning quintet: Melford (piano and melodica), Ingrid Laubrock (tenor and soprano sax), Mary Halvorson (guitar), Tomeka Reid (cello), and Lesley Mok (drums). These new pieces stand on their own and do not require familiarity with the original suite. On “Insertion One,” the album opens with a dark, tangled piano introduction that ultimately gives way to luminescence. Where there is light, there is shadow, and the album repeatedly swings from the one to the other—from dark, dense turbulence to spare, spacious calm. It’s not a Manichean arrangement. The shadow and light aren’t necesarily at odds. They are unified in an ongoing dynamic. The water on Twombly’s Mediterranean Sea is sometimes rough, sometimes calm, with light glinting and singing differently off its surface, and Melford captures the moods of the fire and water interaction, relying heavily on sonic textures and gestures as much as on melody and rhythm. The back and forth between light and shadow culminates in the final track, “Insertion Five,” where an uncertain, shadowed space is overtaken by Melford’s piano speeding toward the light as the entire quintet coalesces around a final affirmation. Hear the Light Singing offers an often arresting musical experience painted with the brushes of timbre, texture, rhythm, and melody, and it will reward focused, active listening.

Billy Mohler
Ultraviolet (Contagious Music)
A review
Wielding bass-line grooves on his acoustic bass that would sound at very much at home on his electric bass, GRAMMY-nominated composer/bassist Billy Mohler delivers the primary propulsion on his latest album—the first I’ve encountered—Ultraviolet, which features his chordless quartet, with Chris Speed (sax/clarinet), Nate Endsley (trumpet), and Nate Wood (drums). Mohler knows how to write a hook, a skill that reflects his pop music experience, but he also knows how to construct a composition that enables lively improvisation. Exhibit one: the title track, a harder bop number whose fun head instantly worms its way into your ear and whose structure gives the horns plenty of exploratory space. Just as the Jimi Hendrix Experience leveraged the rhythmic anchor of bassist Noel Redding’s insistent lines, freeing drummer Mitch Mitchell to explore a wider rhythmic palette, this quartet relies on Mohler’s lines to drive the music forward, with Wood nicely complementing the leader, working with, against, and across the groove. The brawny bass, beautifully recorded, sets the scene for most of the tracks, laying down a commanding and resonant line. Both Speed and Endsley find the right mood, with their serious jazz chops in support of a good time. Mohler occasionally and effectively adds electronic touches. The nine original tracks—six written and three shorter, improvised compositions based on Mohler’s ideas—touch on personal experiences and carry genuine feeling. The sorrowful “Aberdeen” was written for the late Kurt Cobain, whose melodies, Mohler says, have always resonated with him. The dancing bass line and the island breeze in the horns on the upbeat “Evolution” are likely to get your feet moving. “Reconstruction” closes the album with a hopeful journey and features a nice conversation between the horns near the end.

Lafayette Gilchrist
Undaunted (Morphius Records)
A review
Through multiple listenings, I’ve been trying to sort out what makes composer Lafayette Gilchrist’s music so appealing. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s his humanity and his urgent need to communicate. So whether the music is political or personal; whether it’s happy, sad, angry, or contemplative; whether it’s consonant or dissonant, it is always delivered with a warmth and immediacy that is impossible, for me at least, to resist. I think that is what grabbed me on his 2020 trio album, Now (reviewed here). It has certainly grabbed me on Undaunted, which expands his compositional and textural palette with a sextet that includes drummer Eric Kennedy and bassist Herman Burney, who accompanied him on Now, plus tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, trombonist Christian Hizon, and percussionist Kevin Pinder. Some describe Gilchrist’s music as eccentric, but I think he is perfectly centered in a world of his own creating. Gilchrist’s melodies are fresh and original, and his improvisational lines discover new and surprising channels that run through the changes. He references a variety of pianistic styles, not to mention musical genres, in his improvisations, and I suspect he’d be equally at home playing Saint-Saëns as he would Monk. How can you resist the easy, confident, swinging lope of the title track? A paean to perseverance and self-awareness, it reflects a man as comfortable in his own skin as a regular is at the corner bar. Then, there’s the long passage in “Into the Swirl” where the drums and percussion are levitating over the unison bass and piano line. “Please don’t let it stop,” you’re thinking. What about the beautiful woman who tangos into the room on “Southern Belle”? She’s an irresistible armful, all sweet lubricity and attitude. On the final track, “Metropolitan Musings (Them Streets Again),” the grittiest on an album full of expressive grit, you’ve got folks on the prowl, on the make, on the mend, on the lamb, and on the lookout, with Gilchrist filing a complaint about the roughness of it all while simultaneously embracing the vibrancy of the streets. Gilchrist has a lot to say, and he says it distinctively, thoughtfully, and entertainingly.

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