On Purest Form, James Francies’ second Blue Note album, the pianist doesn’t so much compose music as conjure fascinating nebulae of sound. Like Flight, his 2018 label debut, the sequel continues Francies’ research into music as an abstract language grounded in the stuff of everyday life—vulnerability, resolve, love.

Sweet Megg (a.k.a singer Meaghan Farrell) and woodwind player Ricky Alexander tap into the enduring appeal of early swing on their debut, I’m In Love Again (Turtle Bay Records). Delectably pithy, each of the record’s 11 tunes delivers a heady dose of syncopation and tuneful improvisation, recalling the abandon of jazz-age dance halls and speakeasies.

When the Blue Note reopens with its much-anticipated annual festival this month, British composer/arranger Jacob Collier will be the only headlining vocalist in the lineup. But it would be a mistake to tag him as a jazz singer.

Once, when alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón was working as Charlie Haden’s sideman, legendary bandleader Ornette Coleman joined his former bassist on stage for an encore. Decades before, these two players had spearheaded the free jazz movement as founding members of Coleman’s revolutionary quartet. “That was the only time I ever saw them play together,” Zenón remarked.

Young Jazz Leaders for 2021

Peggy Lee wasn’t born with that name. Her given name, back in May 1920, was Norma Deloris Egstrom. But for some impulsive reason lost to time, the radio host of one of her earliest professional gigs assigned her the now-celebrated anonym, and it stuck. Not only did it stick, it made music history: Peggy Lee went on to become one of the most known (and prolific) jazz and pop singers of her generation.

The trombone’s warm, reverberating sound often goes unappreciated, contends bandleader Jennifer Wharton. Look to jazz history for the reason: The trombone, once the bellwether of swing, lost its popular footing when bebop arrived. Slides just can’t move as fast as valves.

Pat Metheny’s latest, Road to the Sun, represents several departures for the individualistic guitarist-composer.

In 2018, South Korean composer/leader Jihye Lee won the BMI Charlie Parker Jazz Composition Prize for her big band original, “Unshakeable Mind,” which led to a commission for a second, “Revived Mind.” These two compositions, complex pieces woven out of simple threads, help to understand the high concept behind Lee’s second release for Motéma Music, Daring Mind: the composer’s ruminations on New York City, her adopted home.

The little-known fact that light has a mass intrigues Paris-based pianist Benoît Delbecq. In a quest to elucidate the physical manifestation of such ineffable things, the improvisatory composer launches The Weight of Light, his first solo piano recording in more than a decade.

London’s Edition Records has expanded its roster of select U.S. jazz vocalists—a propitious move. Kurt Elling, who signed to the indie label in 2019, debuted Secrets Are The Best Stories on Edition a year ago this month, taking home a Grammy in the best vocal jazz album category for it earlier this year. Long-time industry favorite Gretchen Parlato chose to launch Flor, her first album as a leader in six years, on Edition just last month. And Sachal Vasandani, the label’s latest vocal signatory, drops Midnight Shelter, his first recording for the imprint, on Apr 23.

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It’s hard to think of Chris Potter as only a sax phenom after There Is A Tide, his 2020 solo album recorded at home and launched during lockdown. A one-man jazz orchestra, he played 14 instruments on the release, his third for U.K.-based Edition Records. His move to Edition in 2019 makes room for such creative forays, which continue apace with this year’s Sunrise Reprise.

With Adventures of the Wildflower, Yelena Eckemoff’s March 19 release through her own label, L&H Productions, the composer adds another voluptuous creation to her extensive canon of nature-themed works. This modern jazz song cycle—18 distinct pieces in all—depicts musically the life of a columbine plant, from seed to eventual death and rebirth. For Eckemoff, however, the symbolism of the columbine runs deeper than mere inspiration.

In 2015, singer Gretchen Parlato received her first Grammy nomination—a crowning glory to a decade of career triumphs—and then nearly dropped out of sight. Through the nine neo-Brazilian compositions on Flor, her debut album for Edition Records due out March 5, Parlato speaks to the personal transformation that inspired this career hiatus.

Tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman appreciates his daily routines these days: a jaunt to the beach, some sea diving in the Atlantic Ocean, and three or four hours of studying bel canto opera. In mid-2020, soon after the coronavirus pandemic reached Brooklyn, his base of operation for decades, he had decided to relocate to the city of Fortaleza, in the northeast corner of his native Brazil. Since then, these newly established disciplines have provided him with “the perfect combination for life,” he said in a December Zoom call with Downbeat.

In November 2000, writer and musicologist Lara Pellegrinelli published an article in The Village Voice that took Wynton Marsalis to task for the dearth of female instrumentalists in the famed JALC orchestra. The historic piece, thorough and thoughtful, still stands as a clarion call for gender equity, even as several of the players mentioned—pianist Renee Rosnes, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington—have set strong precedents for women in jazz. Further, in the years since the article was published, Marsalis has opened up the JALC orchestra to female instrumentalists, and in 2018 he gave a permanent chair in the ensemble to a woman for the first time. That player—saxophonist Camille Thurman—is also a kickass jazz vocalist.

Only once does drummer Francisco Mela cede control on MPT Trio, Volume 1 (577 Records), his debut album with tenorist Hery Paz and electric guitarist Juanma Trujillo. Otherwise, his unflappable grasp of momentum on the album’s eight tracks is a marvel, given the overwhelming impulse, as a listener, to collapse into the many disparate feels and moods on this record.

In the summer of 2016, pianist Keith Jarrett set out on a solo tour, concertizing extemporaneously in some of the greatest performance halls of Europe. ECM, his label since the 1970s, was on hand to document this history in the making: Munich 2016, the first album from that cache of live recordings, dropped in September 2019. By the time of this release, Jarrett had suffered two paralyzing strokes, throwing into doubt the future of his pioneering, 50-year career.

Saxophonist Dayna Stephens’ world view differs from that of most people. As the survivor of a rare kidney disease, he understood the threat of the impending global pandemic earlier than most. “I had a gig with [pianist] Kenny Barron in Atlanta on January 25 [last] year, and I was afraid to get on an airplane. So, I drove from New York to Atlanta. People thought I was crazy.”