The longest track on “Perfection,” the debut album by a jazz trio with David Murray on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, Geri Allen on piano and Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, clocks in at just over eight minutes, covering so much ground that it feels almost like an epic. Composed by Mr. Murray, it’s a swinging tune with a pensive yet intrepid melody, and a midsection of bristling abstraction. The title is playfully apt: “The David, Geri & Terri Show.” Dynamic combustion is the core characteristic of this all-star trio, which first convened at the 2015 NYC Winter Jazzfest. Mr. Murray, 61, is an improviser of great, garrulous bluster, while Ms. Allen and Ms. Carrington, both in their 50s, have forged prominent careers more in line with the postbop mainstream.

Director and violinist Amandine Beyer acknowledges in her booklet notes for this disc that the world may not seem to need another recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, but then she tops the bar she has set up by delivering an entirely distinctive reading of the work. Her version, with the Italian historical-instrument group Gli Incogniti (who are not quite as unknown as all that), is as strikingly revisionist as the various turbo-powered, operatic Vivaldi recordings that began coming out of Italy in the 1990s, but it is different in flavor. In her own words, Beyer seeks "lightweight forces and freedom of phrasing." The group is small, with microphones put down right in the middle, and you hear lots of internal lines and interplay rather than contrast between orchestra and soloist.

Leon Russell and the Shelter People is the second solo album by the singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Leon Russell, released in 1971. It peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 200 in the USA.

Solange, the well-known R&B and soul artist, is out with a new album this Friday. She had apparently teased the album through sending 86 books to fans with hints about the album. As the announcement occurred so close to the release date, it can be regarded as a surprise album. The album will feature tons of features including Dev Hynes, Sampha, Moses Sumney, Q-Tip, Kelly Rowland, The-Dream, and BJ the Chicago Kid. She has apparently been working on the album for three years. The album will be released this Friday, September 30th via Saint Records and Columbia.

Benjamin, for your new CD recording you have selected Beethoven’s and Schubert’s very last piano sonatas. Why have you chosen these works specifically, just now, in 2014?

Instead of Leonard Bernstein, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra was fronted this time by Vladimir Golschmann. Born in Paris to Russian émigrés in 1893 and head of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 1931, Golschmann was one of the few conductors with whom Gould apparently never had problems, and vice versa. In the Beethoven concerto Gould played his own cadenza – with a noticeable nod to Max Reger ….

Among the projects that Columbia had arranged with Gould were the complete recordings of Bach’s solo keyboard works and the Beethoven sonatas. Both were to remain unfinished. Long after becoming a concert drop-out, Gould now planned to become a “record drop-out”: “My contract with CBS runs a bit beyond my 50th year. After that, there is going to be a major change of gears, much as there was twenty years ago.”

Keith Sweat's first studio album since 2011 arrived as the singer's syndicated radio program, The Sweat Hotel, was approaching its tenth year. It could be deduced that the gig has sharpened Sweat's ears and pen, as Dress to Impress features his best round of songs in well over a decade. Beside a small cast of writing and production associates that includes Wirlie Morris and Derek Allen, Sweat focuses on romance and emotional connection. The album sounds fresh while drawing from numerous eras, just as the Sweat Hotel playlist roams from decade to decade.

Hard to believe it will be twenty years ago next year that the hard bop ensemble One For All debuted with Too Soon To Tell on the fledgling Sharp Nine label. Formed as a group that regularly played together at an uptown Broadway club called Augie's, each member was just at the start of their own budding careers. Even today, it continues to be a surprise that these gentlemen still find the time to assemble for the occasional record date or live appearance. Over the course of The Third Decade's eleven generous tracks, we get to hear a well-honed machine operating at peak power. Even though distances often keep these six gentlemen apart, one can only hope their new home at Smoke Sessions will provide for further releases and the we won't have to wait another five years before the next one.