Chris Lightcap, Ben Wendel and Tootie Heath Have New Albums

Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth

EPICENTER

Fifteen years ago, the bassist Chris Lightcap released an auspicious debut album, “Lay-Up,” involving a nonstandard quartet configuration with two tenor saxophones up front. Mr. Lightcap still hasn’t exhausted that format: “Epicenter” (Clean Feed), due out on Wednesday, is his fourth album to feature it — and by and large his best, which is saying something. It comprises a batch of tunes Mr. Lightcap wrote as a commission, “New York: Lost and Found,” tailored to Bigmouth, his longtime band. The saxophonists are Tony Malaby and Chris Cheek; the rhythm section includes Craig Taborn on acoustic and Wurlitzer pianos and Gerald Cleaver on drums. Mr. Lightcap has a fondness for interlocking parts and a frame of reference that runs from West African music (as in the vamp that slowly materializes in “Stone by Stone”) to the Velvet Underground (as in a potent “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” the lone cover). You could listen to this album and fixate on the contrasting tenor styles: drier and more linear for Mr. Cheek, harder and blurrier for Mr. Malaby. But these musicians all have endless history together, and their total cohesion, with its earthy elasticity, feels like the larger point.

Ben Wendel

THE SEASONS

A tenor saxophonist, bassoonist and composer with an unassuming breadth of style, Ben Wendel has made a subspecialty out of duologue, recently and notably with the pianist Dan Tepfer. For his new project — “The Seasons,” inspired by the Tchaikovsky piano suite of the same name — Mr. Wendel is unveiling a new duet every month this year, with video freely available at benwendel.com/theseasons. He conceived each piece with a handpicked collaborator in mind, like the pianist Taylor Eigsti, whose playing on “January” suggests a swirl of deft angularities and busy composure. “February,” which was posted on Feb. 23, is a more driving proposition: Mr. Wendel and one of his saxophone influences, Joshua Redman, dart through its syncopated form with an intense but collegial give and take. Both videos spotlight terrifically assured performances with sharp production values, raising expectations for Mr. Wendel’s 10 remaining installments, with partners yet to be revealed.

Tootie Heath, Ethan Iverson, Ben Street

PHILADELPHIA BEAT

Albert Heath, better known in jazz circles as Tootie, is a drummer whose cadence and bearing were forged during bebop’s second wave, roughly 60 years ago. Now 79, he has a good thing in his trio with the pianist Ethan Iverson and the bassist Ben Street, insightful musicians a few decades his junior. “Philadelphia Beat,” due out on Sunnyside on Tuesday, is their third album, at once an act of historical preservation and an argument against sanctimony. Half of its tracks are standards like the Benny Harris tune “Reets and I,” unpacked with casual flair. But there’s also a fond interpretation of a Bach cantata; a scrap from a book of scalar patterns by Yusef Lateef, one of Mr. Heath’s former bandleaders; and dry readings of both a disco touchstone (“I Will Survive”) and a crossover soul ballad (“Everything Must Change”), with tactics that faintly evoke Mr. Iverson’s main outlet, the Bad Plus. The album’s title is a nod to the regional signature that Mr. Heath, through all of his travels, has managed never to leave behind. (His trio performs Tuesday through next Sunday at the Village Vanguard, villagevanguard.com.)

Jo Lawry

TAKING PICTURES

Jo Lawry came across as a jazz singer of dazzling self-possession on her 2008 debut, “I Want to Be Happy.” If you’ve seen her onstage since then, there’s a decent chance it was in the company of Sting, as a featured member of his band. “Taking Pictures” (Fleurieu), Ms. Lawry’s overdue second album, reflects this shift, convincingly reframing her as a singer-songwriter in an adult-contemporary mode. Most of her tunes are chronicles of love and the risks taken therein: On “Ready Aim Fire” and “I Said No,” she takes cold responsibility for a relationship’s end. But Ms. Lawry is still as much of an optimist as she is a perfectionist, and most of these love songs find her marveling at her good fortune. Musically she’s in excellent company, including a few singers — Alan Hampton, Theo Bleckmann and, on a tune that feels tailored to him, Sting — who amplify her sunny prowess.

Anouar Brahem

SOUVENANCE

The Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem has long favored chamber-like settings, but he’d never composed for strings before making his new album, “Souvenance” (ECM). Indirectly inspired by the sociopolitical upheavals in his country over the last five years, the album assumes a muted cinematic sweep, with scant harmonic movement but a wealth of shifting texture. Mr. Brahem enlisted several veteran collaborators — the pianist François Couturier, the bass clarinetist Klaus Gesing and the bassist Björn Meyer — along with the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, conducted by Pietro Mianiti. The oud playing is infallibly strong, but some of the album’s more striking moments belong to Mr. Gesing, who knows how to suggest the strain of a human voice. Spread across two CDs, this is a work of tensile beauty, by turns hopeful and foreboding.

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