"The Sirens" is acclaimed saxophonist Chris Potter’s ECM debut as a leader. It is an album of mood and melody, inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey, both with its epic atmosphere and timeless humanity. Potter has previously contributed on several ECM albums with Dave Holland, Paul Motian and Jason Moran. Joining Potter are virtuosic musicians Craig Taborn, David Virelles, Larry Grenadier and Eric Harland. Potter declaims lyrical lines over the dynamically inventive rhythm section, as coloristic keyboards shimmer like stars in the night sky.

“Avenging Angel” is Craig Taborn’s distinguished contribution to the great solo piano tradition at ECM, a powerful, purposeful and rigorous album, which rises to the challenges of the format and transcends them. The disc explores the textural dimensions of sound, builds new structures, uncovers a rugged lyricism. Recorded in the optimal acoustics of the recital room at Lugano’s Studio RSI, with Manfred Eicher producing, it’s Taborn’s first disc under his own name for ECM, following on from inspired sessions with Roscoe Mitchell, Evan Parker, David Torn and Michael Formanek.

The Bell features dynamic chamber music compositions written for masterful improvisers. The best thing I caught all weekend, said critic Peter Margasak of the 2014 New York Winter Jazzfest, was a superb trio led by drummer Ches Smith with pianist Craig Taborn and violist Mat Maneri, which expertly infused seductively narcotic writing with a mixture of brooding melody and rich texture.

Blending jazz improvisation, post-John Cage modernism, funk and the occasional touch of rock, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and its co-founder, Roscoe Mitchell, made good on the ambition of its motto: "Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future". Mr. Mitchell formed that group in the wake of his involvement in the 1965 founding of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a pathbreaking collective of black artists known as the A.A.C.M.

Craig Taborn was recently hailed by DownBeat as “one of the visionaries of the current wave”. His unique perspective on creative music-making has established him as a pioneer of jazz. Produced by Manfred Eicher, Chants finds its own response to the vast tradition of piano trios. It channels the special skills of drummer Gerald Cleaver and bassist Thomas Morgan. The ensemble shares an appreciation for compositional shapes and multi-layered improvisational details, as the music is pulled between the poles of density and spaciousness, to dramatic and thrilling effect.

"Imaginary Cities", an album of great power and expressive range, is the recording premiere of saxophonist Chris Potter’s new Underground Orchestra. At the core of this larger ensemble is the personnel of his long-established Underground quartet – with Adam Rogers, Craig Taborn and Nate Smith – now joined by two bassists, a string quartet, and Potter’s old comrade from Dave Holland Quintet days, vibes and marimba virtuoso Steve Nelson.

Impulse!/Verve present “The Passion of Charlie Parker”, an album of iconic Parker songs transformed through the addition of lyrics to create a musical play that narrates Bird’s life. Produced by Larry Klein with lyrics by David Baerwald, the album features actor Jeffrey Wright in the role of Parker as narrator, with vocals provided by Wright, Gregory Porter, Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Barbara Hannigan, Luciana Souza, Kurt Elling and Camille Bertault.

Keyboardist Craig Taborn’s Daylight Ghosts is his third ECM release as a leader, a quartet album following acclaimed solo and trio recordings. In addition to Taborn on piano and electronic keyboards and drummer Dave King, the quartet features two New York jazz luminaries, reed player Chris Speed and bassist Chris Lightcap. Each member draws from a broad artistic background, as informed by rock, electronica and diverse strains of world music as by the various permutations of jazz improvisation. "Daylight Ghosts" is animated by dynamism and spectral ambience, acoustic and electric sounds and groove and lingering melody.

Iraqi-American trumpeter, saunter player, vocalist and composer Amir ElSaffar leads his Rivers of Sound Orchestra in a performance of his own Not Two. The result is a new approach to transcultural music as the seventeen musicians create a new musical language through combining contrasting musical traditions, contributing to ElSaffar’s reputation for extending the boundaries of both jazz and Middle Eastern music.

"Small Places" is double-bassist/composer Michael Formanek’s follow-up to The Rub and Spare Change, his widely lauded ECM debut as a leader. The new album features the same powerhouse band of longtime confreres, with Formanek in seemingly telepathic league with saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. If anything, "Small Places" is a step beyond this quartet’s first release, with the compositions and improvisation blending so that a listener is scarcely able to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Earthy yet atmospheric, this is jazz alive with dark-hued melody and bone-deep rhythms, rich in dynamic possibility and the sound of surprise.