Saxophonist Houston Person and bassist Ron Carter have a duo partnership that goes back at least as far as their two 1990 recordings, Something in Common and Now's the Time! Since those albums, the legendary artists have released several more duo collaborations, each one a thoughtful and minimalist production showcasing their masterful command of jazz standards, blues, and bop. The duo's 2016 effort, the aptly titled Chemistry, is no exception and once again finds Person and Carter communing over a well-curated set of jazz standards. As on their previous albums, Chemistry is a deceptively simple conceit; just two jazz journeymen playing conversational duets on well-known jazz songs. At face value, that is certainly what you get. The deception enters into the equation with just how masterful and nuanced Person and Carter are in each song. Whether it's the way Carter anchors the duo's yearning reading of "But Beautiful" with his languorous, doomy basslines, or the way Person's languorous rubato introduction joins up with Carter on "Fools Rush In," they never fail to find surprising and deeply emotive ways to interpret each song. Similarly, cuts like the poignant "Blame It on My Youth" and the dewy-eyed "I Can't Get Started" are endearing romantic numbers that cradle the listener in the warmth of Person and Carter's warm tones. Elsewhere, they deliver a gleeful version of Thelonious Monk's "Blue Monk," and summon the memory of Carter's former boss, trumpeter Miles Davis, with their jaunty take on "Bye Bye Blackbird." Ultimately, Chemistry is a lovely, heartfelt album of well-loved standards imbued with the duo's decades of experience.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Judging from the way Dark Passion Play starts out, it's understandable to assume that it's some sort of opera aria. But hold tight, dear friends, because from out of nowhere metal guitar riffs come swooping in. That's Nightwish for ya -- a Finnish quintet that had been walking the line between symphonic and metallic for ten years by the time of this 2007 release. The album signals the arrival of new singer Anette Olson (who replaced longtime member Tarja Turunen), but for longtime fans worried that this lineup shuffle may alter the band's sound and direction, there's no reason to fret -- Nightwish are as bombastic and dramatic as ever. Understandably, there are quite a few similarities between symphonic metal and prog metal, and this is certainly the case on such tracks as "Bye Bye Beautiful," which contains a very Dream Theater-esque opening. Elsewhere, "Eva" focuses primarily on the vocal talents of Nightwish's new frontwoman, while the slow-building album opener, "The Poet and the Pendulum," proves to be a neat summary of Nightwish's style. Depending on which side of the metal fence you're on, Dark Passion Play is either a symphonic metal triumph or merely pretentious twaddle.© Greg Prato /TiVo

Standards is a 12-track collection that is culled from the sessions that resulted in the House Party and Home Cookin' albums, both of which featured Jimmy Smith in a trio with guitarist Kenny Burrell and drummer Donald Bailey. All of the songs are familiar standards along the lines of "Bye Bye Blackbird," "I'm Just a Lucky So and So," "September Song," "Mood Indigo" and "It Might As Well Be Spring," and seven of the tracks are previously unreleased. Throughout the album, the trio is relaxed and laidback, resulting in a warm, inviting collection of standards. It's among Smith's mellowest recordings, and it's all the better for it.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

There's something in the languid soprano of Jimmy Scott's voice that communicates heartache in a way few other vocalists can touch; even when he's singing a relatively upbeat number, the nooks and crannies of Scott's stretched-out phrasing and subtle vibrato conjure vivid images of late nights and lost loves, while managing to make romantic melancholy sound almost luxurious in its beauty. But Beautiful, Scott's third album for Milestone (and seventh since his comeback in the early '90s -- not bad for a man who once went 15 years between sessions), is cut from the same cloth as his previous sets for the label, Mood Indigo and Over the Rainbow. Producer Todd Barkan has once again set Scott up with a small combo of superb jazz players (including Joe Beck on guitar and guest shots from Wynton Marsalis and Freddy Cole) and subtle but compelling arrangements (mostly by pianist Renee Rosnes) of ten classic standards; if But Beautiful is less ambitious than Scott's "comeback" albums for Warner Bros., there's no arguing that it plays to his strengths and captures Scott in marvelous form. At the age of 76, Scott's voice is losing just a bit of its elasticity, but for the most part his instrument is in surprisingly good shape, and his sense of phrasing remains impeccable; plenty of Oscar-winning actors could not express longing and loss as eloquently as Scott does on "Darn That Dream" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love," and the agonizing clarity of his hope on "When You Wish Upon a Star" is enough to move the hardest heart. Jimmy Scott's recent work gives the lie to F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous remark that there are no second acts in American lives, and if But Beautiful doesn't capture him at the absolute peak of his form, plenty of singers half his age would be grateful to make an album that commanded a fraction of this set's power to move the heart and soul.© Mark Deming /TiVo

From the mid-'50s through the early '60s, Rahsaan Roland Kirk's multi-instrument dexterity was treated as a bit of a novelty. After all, here was a blind guy with three or four horns wrapped around his neck—some of which were exotic, modified variations like the manzello, a B-flat soprano sax, or the stritch, an E-flat alto sax—who switched between them seamlessly (or sometimes, seeming to play them simultaneously). However, Kirk's playing and compositional approach was never frivolous or goofy; in fact, it became more and more dense, daring, and mature as time went on. His work with the likes of Charles Mingus, Roy Haynes, and even John Cage eventually brought around many of his critics, and by the late '60s, he had clearly carved out his own lane of dynamic, adventurous jazz that, by the time he signed to Atlantic Records in the early '70s, had exploded into an avant-soul superhighway. Kirk's ideas were voluminous and wide-ranging during this era, careening from deeply-felt experimental albums (Root Strata) to clear-eyed nostalgia (a swinging collaboration with '40s crooner Al Hibbler) to mind-blowing feats of physical jazz prowess (he played the entirety of one album all in one breath). The Case of the 3-Sided Dream is the both the culmination and the peak of those varying impulses: a concept album spread across three sides of a double album (side four was largely blank, apart from some recordings of Kirk on the telephone) designed not only to free him from his record contract but also to expand the possibilities of what a "jazz album" even was in the mid-'70s. This was, after all, the era in which "electric jazz" had abandoned its promise of revolution and instead settled for highly polished, soul-flecked fusion. The bold experiments of the free jazz scene had returned to the underground, and most of the titans of the '50s and '60s engaged in either misguided attempts to connect with commercial audiences or retro-minded purity contests. For Kirk to come out with an album featuring bonkers spoken-word interludes, rudimentary sampling, frenetic flute solos, musique concrète experiments, funk grooves, and multiple versions of various standards ... well, it very explicitly positioned him as one of the few major jazz musicians of the era trying to keep the genre moving forward without sacrificing its sense of adventure or political and personal empowerment. It's funky and fusion-y, sure, but it's also incredibly idiosyncratic and experimental. The concept is densely inscrutable, but also completely literal—it is about a dream and thus, plays out like a dream sequence, bouncing around from idea to idea, returning to some repeatedly while abandoning others immediately. This is most obvious in Kirk's approach to the standards; for instance, Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer"—a well-trod path if ever there was one—gets visited twice, once as a familiar, bluesy blowing session and then again as a psycho-latin-funk-freakout containing one of Kirk's best flute solos. He takes a similar approach to "Lover Man" (recast here as "Portrait of Those Beautiful Ladies"), but by placing these warped touchstones next to his own pieces—weirdo groove explorations like the two-part "Freaks for the Festival" and absolutely experimental material like the Moondog-esque "Echoes of Primitive Ohio & Chili Dogs"—Kirk is evoking both the traditions and forward motion of jazz while also putting the listener in a sort of disoriented dream state. It's a remarkable work indeed, and were he to not have suffered a debilitating stroke shortly after making it, one marvels at how much further he could have continued taking his ideas. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz