Cornetist Josh Berman's trio with Jason Roebke on bass and Chris Corsano on drums brings Chicago's jazz lineage into sharp contemporary focus, balancing compact composition and expansive interaction through playful, adventurous music that draws on early jazz, AACM-rooted invention, melodic swing, textural abstraction, and volatile rhythmic exchange.

A long-overdue first sole-leader album from drummer Charles Downs, formerly Rashid Bakr, bringing his deep history with Cecil Taylor, Jemeel Moondoc, Other Dimensions in Music, and the New York avant-garde into a collective quartet with Hery Paz on saxophone, Jamie Saft on piano, and Joe Morris on bass for five improvisations of fire, lyricism, angular reflection, and seasoned rapport.

A rediscovered 2014 live recording captures Satoko Fujii leading a specially assembled Bielefeld orchestra of professionals and young regional musicians through her monumental Shiki and works by Andreas Kaling, Natsuki Tamura, Luise Volkmann, and Fujii, blending conduction, written structure, collective improvisation, electronics, dual drums, and volatile large-ensemble energy.

Returning to Chicago with a fierce solo recital for contrabass saxophone, Jon Irabagon explores the instrument's cavernous depth, reverberant resonance, and agile extremities through unaccompanied improvisations and lesser-known works by Julius Hemphill and Anthony Braxton, revealing both the deep blues gravity and structural ingenuity of their music.

Bringing Michael Marcus' reeds and tarogato into a quartet with pianist Rod Williams, bassist Ricky Rodriguez, and drummer Allan Mednard, this ESP-Disk release extends Marcus' post-bop and avant-jazz language through compositions shaped by funky Monk-like angles, tight rhythmic interplay, lyrical woodwind clarity, and the seasoned drive of players versed in blues, free jazz, and modern creative music.

Bridging generations of creative music, pianist Milton Michaeli, double bassist Asaf Shchori, and drummer Hamid Drake form a vividly responsive trio, blending original compositions and improvisation into music shaped by jazz and Latin traditions, deep grooves, bowed textures, lyrical bass movement, spiritual rhythm, and inspirations from Sun Ra and Ras Michael.

Returning after their 577 Records debut, Long Island improvisers Tony Orzano on alto saxophone and clarinet, Bryan Rohmer on guitar, and Jeremy Wexler on drums deliver ten volatile, unedited performances, rapidly shifting between abrasive free jazz, fractured punk momentum, distorted noise, skewed grooves, and spacious textural exchanges on the inaugural release from Orzano and Rohmer's Sonic Index Works imprint.

The solo noise project of Noah Jerge, also associated with the power-electronics project Mindcrawler, Autophagia turns communication into overload on this Love Earth Music release, using harsh electronics, damaged signal, feedback, density, and physical pressure to create a raw California underground statement where speech collapses into rupture and amplified confrontation.

Drawing on Italian folk melodies, family memory, and the legacy of Blaser's maternal grandmother, Resistance fighter Rosina Pierina Scarpioni, trombonist Samuel Blaser joins Russ Lossing on piano, Masa Kamaguchi on bass, and Billy Mintz on drums in a deeply personal quartet session of open spaces, raucous interplay, lyrical intimacy, and contemporary improvisation shaped by heritage, song, and identity.

Drawing on Italian folk melodies, family memory, and the legacy of Blaser's maternal grandmother, Resistance fighter Rosina Pierina Scarpioni, trombonist Samuel Blaser joins Russ Lossing on piano, Masa Kamaguchi on bass, and Billy Mintz on drums in a deeply personal quartet session of open spaces, raucous interplay, lyrical intimacy, and contemporary improvisation shaped by heritage, song, and identity.

Pairing Carver and Steven Meketa's electronica, electronics, and harmonica as Meketa Power Electronics with Cut's solo composer/performer works, this Love Earth Music split moves through devotional power electronics, abrasive noise, breath-driven instability, and concentrated sound pressure, contrasting raw spiritual confrontation with direct, stripped-down underground sound construction.

Extending their TRAC debut Cylinder Plus, Teddy Ryles and Alexander Cooper shape a 90-minute two-CD computer-music composition developed with custom source-filter modeling and cepstral-based transfer methods, transforming digital artifacts, modeled resonance, spectral detail, and unstable electronic textures into a long-form electro-acoustic study of timbre, residue, structure, and abstraction.

Expanse Percussion Edition assembles 10 improvisers for a long-form work balancing reeds, brass, fretless bass, electronics, drum sets, membrane percussion, and an immense array of auxiliary instruments, using rapid doubling and constant instrumental changes to create organic transformations through shifting densities, layered rhythms, broad contrasts, and continuously evolving electroacoustic sonorities.

The Neurodivergent Orchestra combines reeds, brass, guitar, bass, drums, electronics, toys, clown horns, and real-time processing with fully improvised "wacky banter," framing a mock academic presentation on evil clowns that moves through history, popular culture, and surreal invention while balancing theatrical humor, spontaneous storytelling, and the broad-palette electroacoustic improvisation of the Evil Clown aesthetic.

Composer Alexandre David brings together Quatuor Bozzini, Plaisirs du clavecin, Orchestre de l'Agora, conductor Nicolas Ellis, and Innu poet and vocalist Natasha Kanape Fontaine in 3 works that balance concentrated string writing, voice & text, and vivid orchestral color, reflecting David's fascination with sonority, collaborative creation, and the transformation of personal musical memories.

Montreal-based Quatuor Bozzini records Jurg Frey's Streichquartett (1988) at Radiostudio Zurich, shaping spare scales, measured intervals, and quietly sustained tones into music of unusual clarity and concentration, where seemingly anonymous material reveals its own distinct character through space, duration, resonance, and the tactile presence of sound.

Quatuor Bozzini performs works by Canadian composer Owen Underhill, joined by countertenor Daniel Cabena and sackbut player Jeremy Berkman in settings of 17th-century poetry, alongside two string quartets shaped by encounters with John Cage, quoted musical fragments, natural landscapes, specific places, and personal memory, balancing lucid formal design with vocal expression and finely detailed instrumental color.

Toronto percussionist Ryan Scott premieres fourteen commissioned works by Canadian composers, revealing the snare drum's remarkable range through traditional and extended techniques, electronics, objects, cymbal, bass drum, metal plates, and voice, while presenting a vivid survey of contemporary Canadian percussion writing and expanding the instrument's solo repertoire.

Simulacrum's expanded lineup brings David Peck, Michael Caglianone, John Fugarino, Cyrus Shauoul, Robin Amos, Jonathan LaMaster, and Michael Knoblach together for a dense electroacoustic improvisation, layering reeds, brass, violin, bass, synthesizers, spoken-word interludes, signal processing, and unusual percussion into a continuously shifting field of tightly coordinated textures and sonorities.

Advancing James Brandon Lewis' "Molecular Systematic Music" into what he describes as a kind of twelve-tone gospel, this sixth quartet album joins his commanding tenor saxophone and compositions with Aruan Ortiz's incisive piano, Brad Jones' grounded bass and Chad Taylor's responsive drumming in spiritually charged music shaped by rigorous structure, lyrical force and deeply interactive ensemble dialogue.

Uniting Candice Hoyes' poetic vocals and electronics, Mimi Jones' bass, voice and pedals, and Val Jeanty's drums and electronic sound design, with guest flutist Nicole Mitchell and trumpeter Milena Casado, Nite Bjuti creates an Afrofuturist blend of Caribbean rhythms, improvised jazz, spoken imagery and layered electronics centered on diaspora, resilience, collective care and the continuing creation of home.

Continuing OM's fusion of rock energy and free improvisation after the death of founding drummer Fredy Studer, soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran and bassist Bobby Burri are joined by percussionists Gerry Hemingway and Tony Buck for a live set of dense electroacoustic interplay, surging rhythmic force and open-ended collective invention, carrying the group's "ElectroAcoustiCore" language into a new era.

French double bassist Bruno Chevillon presents only his second solo album in four decades, using bowed resonance, grainy harmonics, percussive attacks, low pizzicato and carefully measured silence to engage the long natural reverberation of a Paris church, treating its stone surfaces, ambient sounds and returning echoes as active partners in a rigorous and deeply expressive acoustic improvisation.

Working in Expanse's quieter, chamber-scaled sound world, David Peck, John Fugarino, Eric Dahlman and Michael Knoblach move among reeds, brass, voices, electronics, keyboards and an expansive array of percussion, creating a spacious improvisation of shifting textures, delicate metallic detail, restrained electronics and sudden bursts of color.

Drawn from two Masters of Sonic Revolution performances, this chamber-scaled Leap of Faith quartet brings David Peck's reeds and double reeds, Glynis Lomon's cello, aquasonic and voice, John Fugarino's brass, and Michael Caglianone's reeds and flute into compact, rapidly shifting improvisations shaped by timbral contrast, close ensemble listening and a more focused acoustic palette than the group's expansive studio sessions.

An international quartet of Joanna Mattrey on viola, Camila Nebbia on tenor saxophone, Camilo Angeles on flute and effects, and Violeta Garcia on cello and effects, developing seven volatile collective improvisations where breath, bowed resonance, abrasive attacks and subtle electronics move between fragile chamber textures, urgent counterpoint and dense, rhythmically charged eruptions.

Composer Finola Merivale surrounds Catherine Sikora's layered tenor saxophone, breath tones and multiphonics with electronics and field recordings gathered in County Cork, New York and other changing environments, creating three immersive electroacoustic works that move from stark detail to surging masses of sound while exploring landscape, displacement, memory and the unsettled meaning of home.

Longtime friends and saxophone innovators Evan Parker on soprano and John Zorn on alto meet for their first dedicated studio collaboration, layering circular-breathed lines, multiphonics, whispers, cries and volatile gestures into five spacious works that treat the reeds as sources of breath, texture and atmosphere, balancing intimate beauty with finely controlled turbulence.

Swiss guitarist Florian Stoffner presents six concentrated solo improvisations that extend the textural precision of his work with John Butcher and Chris Corsano, using clipped notes, metallic resonance, muted attacks, harmonics and carefully measured silence to transform the electric guitar into an intimate field of fractured melody, tactile detail and spontaneous formal invention.

Reuniting fourteen years after their first album, trumpeter Jacob Wick, pianist Marc Riordan and drummer Frank Rosaly revive Tres Hongos for eight live improvisations of fractured piano gestures, searching brass lines and continually reorganized percussion, moving through spacious suspensions, playful melodic exchanges and dense eruptions with the sharp reflexes and volatile rapport of a long-established trio.

Using David Peck's expanding system of color-coded Frame Notation, this fifth Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units performance gathers 19 musicians from the Evil Clown, western Massachusetts and Vermont improvising communities into a large-scale work of voices, reeds, brass, strings, keyboards, electronics and percussion, balancing preplanned entrances and ensemble events with organically unfolding collective invention.

Inspired by John Cage and Kenneth Patchen's experimental radio play The City Wears a Slouch Hat, vibraphonist Sergio Armaroli joins Elliott Sharp on guitar and soprano saxophone, Steve Piccolo on speech and electronics, bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders in an episodic "audio graphic novel" of vivid verbal cues, shifting textures and freely improvised ensemble scenes.

Reconfiguring the long-running Conference Call quartet with pianist Uwe Oberg alongside tenor saxophonist Gebhard Ullmann, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer/bugler Dieter Ulrich, this first New Conference Call release moves through intricate compositions, spacious collective improvisation and volatile free-jazz exchanges, including tributes to Joe Maneri, Ornette Coleman and Jim Pepper.