Clear vinyl. Artful designs. A shiny, luxe collector’s box. No question, Newvelle albums are beautiful to the eye. The story could end there, with these records sitting as vanities on a shelf somewhere. But you’ll want to take them down. They sound as gorgeous as they look.

From the 1970s to the 1990s, most of Keith Jarrett’s extended improvisations—a marvel of the jazz world—were long, clocking in at about 30 to 45 minutes apiece. But in the 2000s, his solo pieces became shorter, hardly ever topping 15 minutes, and mostly hitting well below that mark. This stylistic shift called attention away from the capaciousness of Jarrett’s extemporaneous playing and focused it instead on his freakish ability to improvise sonata-like movements on the fly.  

On a video from the 2015 International Jazz Day, filmed in Paris, clarinetist Oran Etkin and keyboardist Herbie Hancock are joking around. “I wanna say hi to all the Timbalooloo kids,” says Hancock, Jazz Day founder, directly to the camera. “Thank you so much for being part of this program and thank you for doing my music. Maybe I’m the Watermelon Man!”

Nat King Cole (1919-1965) achieved international fame for his romantic crooning in the 1950s and 1960s—he was, in fact, the biggest-selling pop artist of his generation, writes Will Friedwald, music journalist and co-producer of Resonance Records’ retrospective on the artist, Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943), in the liner notes. But “only a few older fans and critics remembered that he had been one of the greatest pianists in the whole history of American music”, Friedwald continued. The new album, released last month in honor of the 100th anniversary of Cole’s birth, helps to redress this oversight. 

The most revealing portion of Eri Yumamoto’s new work, the seven-part Goshu Ondo Suite, lies at the beginning of Part III, when the pianist/composer plays alone for three thrilling minutes. In those minutes one hears succinct stepwise motion in the left hand, against fluid improvisation and vivid chords in the right, all leading to a decisive rhythmic motif—the same motif that reappears in strategic spots throughout the piece. In this riveting solo, Yumamoto touches on each of the elements that, when blown up large, make for a radiant concerto.

The newly launched box set, The Fred Hersch Trio: 10 Years/6 Discs, on Palmetto Records, captures this landmark ensemble in the studio, on the road, and at its spiritual home, the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two of the albums’ six discs were session gigs and the remaining four recorded live. Curiously, Hersch assigned impressionistic titles to the studio dates—Whirl (PM 2143) and Floating (PM 2171)—while the live dates received more pragmatic treatment: Alive at the Village Vanguard, Discs 1 and 2 (PM 2159); Sunday Night at the Vanguard (PM 2183); and Live in Europe (PM 2192).

Piano superstars Chucho Valdés and Chick Corea had never played together before they squared off across two grand pianos in the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Nov. 15. This four-handed performance was the first of two consecutive evenings for the duo, with Valdés as the headliner and Corea as his special guest.

Tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger met trumpeter Steve Lampert on a West Village gig in New York City in 2010 and, as their musical friendship deepened, so did Preminger’s admiration of the elder statesman’s compositional chops. A few years on, he asked Lampert to write a piece featuring himself with an ensemble; he launched the recording of that composition—Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert—on his own label, Dry Bridge Records, this past October.

Saxophonist Caroline Davis and pianist Rob Clearfield’s quartet, Persona, takes its name from the Ingmar Bergman film by that title. In the existentialist thriller, the two leading characters muddle the boundaries that separate their individual psyches; as the story progresses, their hold on reality begins to dissolve in the blur of beautiful black-and-white images.

The curation for ECM Records at 50, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s tribute to the famed record label on Nov. 1 and 2 in New York City, must have been near impossible. How to choose from the legions of venerable artists who have recorded for Manfred Eicher, the label’s founder and guiding visionary, over the last half a century?

On the penultimate evening of the 35th annual Belgrade Jazz Festival, which ran Oct 21-28 in the Serbian capital, pianist Gerald Clayton sat alone on a darkened stage. His fingers seemed barely to touch the keys as he launched into “La Llarona,” master saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s dream-like rendition of the Mexican folk song from his 2016 Blue Note album, I Long To See You. One by one, Lloyd and the other members of Kindred Spirits, Lloyd’s new quintet, joined Clayton on stage for the tune—an exquisite encore to an arguably flawless set.

As musical instruments go, the saxophone came into being relatively late—in the mid-19th century, about a hundred years or so after the oboe and clarinet, and eons after the flute. Unlike these other wind instruments, and somewhat unfortunately, the world of classical music has relegated the saxophone to a small corner of the orchestral canon. But this loss is the jazz world’s gain.

The band Fleur Seule (“single flower” in French) has several weekly residencies this month: The Knickerbocker Hotel, the SoHo Grand Hotel, the New York Marriott Marquis at Times Square, and Tavern on the Green. The stylishly retro group suits these classic New York venues; lead vocalist Allyson Briggs, a vision from the pages of a 1940s glamour magazine, sings traditional pop and jazz standards in several languages unerringly.

Artistic director Vojislav Pantić can recount all sorts of stories about the jazz greats who have played the Belgrade Jazz Festival, now in its 35th edition. There was the time in 1971, the festival’s inaugural year, when trumpeter Miles Davis wouldn’t go on until he was sure that his pianist, a very late Keith Jarrett, had arrived at the concert hall, straight from the tarmac.

 The Warrior Women of Afro-Peruvian Music breaks new ground by delving into the rich musical tradition of black female artists in Peru and challenging the racism, sexism, and marginalization that these women face daily in their homeland.

London composer Binker Golding has a way with a hook. And not just during his addictive, melody-driven sax solos or in his acoustic versions of broken beat rhythm tracks, but when he writes the mischievous titles that describe his music. You may not understand what he means by Abstractions of Reality Past and Incredible Feathers, the title of his new release on Gearbox Records, but the music makes you want to find out.

On “Creative,” the first track of Anatomy of Angels: Live at the Village Vanguard (Verve) pianist and bandleader Jon Batiste packs what seems like eight minutes of music into a dizzying four.

In the late 1950s, Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto and pianist/composer Antônio Carlos (Tom) Jobim revolutionized American music with the introduction of the bossa nova and the samba to the jazz lexicon. America’s love affair with these lyrical rhythms has never gone away—in fact, we continue to discover more about these jazz innovators and their influence through albums like Samba Jazz & Tom Jobim (Sunnyside).

Bandleader and percussionist Adam Rudolph sees himself as an inventor rather than a composer. Composers generate written music with a pen or an app or a music notation program, but he does more than that. He creates new methods for making music.

Last year, Blue Note released Kenny Barron’s leader debut for the label: Concentric Circles, a tour de force for quintet featuring, for the most part, the pianist’s original compositions. Barron had recorded for Blue Note on other high-profile dates—as a sideman for bassist Ron Carter, saxophonist Sonny Fortune, singer Dianne Reeves and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, for example—but never under his own name.