Notable CDs

No mere seven-song, one-hour-10-minute album could capture the vastness and variety of Alec Wilder’s half-century’s worth of compositions. But the aspects of Wilder’s music that Stefano Battaglia (piano), Salvatore Maiore (double bass), and Roberto Dani (drums) do reflect (primarily its shimmer but also that shimmer’s relationship to the melodic lineaments’ lean muscularity) will more than do as an introduction for the curious—and as a means of arousing more curiosity.

The Rochester Mass

Compare this Mass to Dave Brubeck’s not-similar-at-all Mass To Hope! A Celebration, and you’ll experience a vivid demonstration of how far apart two compositions that are both close enough for jazz can be. How close enough is Taylor’s approach? For what it’s worth, the most exhilarating moments, which occur during the “Agnus Dei Part Two” and the cadenza that leads into it, are provided by the Quartet-augmenting flautist Gareth Lockrane. As for the choir, it could sound more integrated. Or maybe it couldn’t.

The Epic

This nearly three-hour showcase for the talent and pretensions of the 31-year-old saxophonist who broke big by playing with Kendrick Lamar isn’t as groundbreaking as its more naïve supporters claim. Some of what it does well has been done before, and some of what it does for the first time (deploying a choir that sounds like the Star Trek theme’s, for instance) shouldn’t have been done at all. But the Malcolm X speech sample sure is interesting. Actually makes X sound like a moderate.

Jagged Rocks

What makes this jaggedly rocking workout a more interesting forum for Kamasi Washington’s sax than The Epic is also what makes it less entertaining: It requires Washington not only to bear the melodic burden alone but also to improvise the melodies while Mike Hughes (drums) and Matt Montgomery (guitar, bass, keyboards) shake, throttle, and—occasionally—roll along. What makes this jaggedly rocking workout a more interesting forum for Washington’s sax than To Pimp a Butterfly is also what makes it more entertaining: Kendrick Lamar is nowhere in sight.

Spotlight

“Then, there are the jazzers,” writes Charles Granata in the liner notes to the new Frank Sinatra box A Voice on Air: 1935-1955 (Columbia/Legacy) of the jazz personalities who appeared with Sinatra on his various radio shows. “And, to me, Frank Sinatra was a jazz singer.” The evidence for Granata’s case as presented by A Voice on Air’s four discs is not entirely convincing, but only because it suggests that “jazz” was only one of the adjectives appropriate to Sinatra’s burgeoning technique.

Meticulously restored from deteriorating lacquer, these performances by the young Sinatra of seemingly every song on the Hit Parade demonstrate the hold that he exerted on the American attention and how he exerted it—with an unprecedented combination of talent and charm. And how young was he? Young enough for Bob Hope to introduce him thus in 1945: “And now for all you men in the armed forces who happen to be 13-year-old girls. …” —A.O.