Tenorist Odean Pope once distilled his method down to playing at the bottom range of his instrument “like John Coltrane played at the top.” A simplification, to be sure, but that inverted sheets-of-sound vernacular is all over the eight originals and two covers that comprise Inspired by Cis. The title is a loving nod to Pope’s recently deceased spouse, and the recording date of January 2010 gives the album’s decade-plus sequestration on the shelf a resounding better-late-than-never poignancy. Drummer Craig McIver’s association with leader dates back the Pope’s Saxophone Choir days in the mid-1990s and bassist Lee Smith also shares longstanding ties.

Both sidemen are equal participants in the deeply personal program, soloing organically and often, and embellishing Pope’s soulful peregrinations with canny combinations of texture and tone color. The lushly loping “PEN,” hip-swiveling swing of “Remembering Prez” and Gordian vertical spirals of “The Thought” rise to the top of the saxophonist’s loosely scripted excursions. Max Roach’s “Lonesome Lover,” an improvisation on “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” and a closing amatory meditation on “My Romance” qualify Pope’s taste in tasteful covers. And contrary to erstwhile contrarian complaints, the sound and balance of the Spirit Room register just fine.

Tenorist Jimmy Halperin’s tenure with CIMP constituted one of the label’s left turn surprises. A devotee of Warne Marsh and student of both Lennie Tristano and Sal Mosca, Halperin’s brainy and individualistic improvisational process also embraces a level of freedom that wasn’t the common province of his mentors. The unofficial CIMP house rhythm section of bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jay Rosen quickly gelled as his preferred compatriots and Work-Play delivers another of their songbook dive conclaves, this time from January of 2013.

Nine titles offer a studious cross section of jazz standards, but Halperin and his colleagues are just as open-minded and ended on Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” and Jobim’s “Corcovado” as they are disassembling Dizzy’s “Be-Bop” and Coltrane’s “Equinox.” A consummate contrafactualist, even when Halperin threads a familiar melody straight, like Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” there’s something deliciously off-center and alien about it. Duval and Rosen played in so many contexts with such dialed in regularity that they can practically finish each other’s musical sentences. Arid and erudite on the surface, there’s a teeming ecology going on in these performances if one only takes the time to dig.

A Philadelphian like Odean Pope, and a participant in several pivotal Cecil Taylor ensembles, Elliott Levin’s been fire-breathing through an arsenal of reed and wind instruments since the second half of the last century. Equally at ease in large and small groups, it’s usually the latter where he incandesces brightest and Free Range Thanks supplies just such a setting with bassist Jason Fraticelli and drummer Ed Watkins. Nine originals: one from Watkins, two from Fraticelli and the remainder from the leader, along a collective improvisation add up to an hour-and-a-quarter of high-octane free jazz.

Levin fields the first half of the program on tenor, getting a canny balance of freight and resonance from the horn, as on the slowly spooling opener “Barcode Key.” Flute and soprano surface in later statements. Watkins officiates a modified kit minus high-hat and bass drum, standing, also making use of an assemblage of cowbells and small percussion effects. Faticelli’s default is a woody, ambling, adhesive lope that detours into ripe, swaggering strut and ardent strum on occasion. Once again, the Spirit Room acoustics are a boon rather than a boondoggle, accommodating all three players with a palpable presence of placement and sonority at all speeds.

Trombonist Steve Swell was a semi-regular at the Spirit Room in the years running up to The Bearable Lightness of Being, leading or contributing to twenty-two separate sessions prior to this March 2014 date at the helm. The album title inversely references Milan Kundera’s existentialist novel and Swell’s trio with altoist Will Connell and drummer Reggie Nicholson makes the absence of a conventional chordal instrument a consistent contextual asset instead of a liability. Compositions are by the leader, except for two takes of Nicholson’s melody driven “Watabu.” “Elegy to Roy Campbell” lovingly, if lugubriously eulogizes a comrade fallen just prior to the session.

There’s something of a New Orleans street-band flavor to the format, with the horns weaving polyphonous peaks and troughs and Nicholson stamping and stomping the center with snare syncopations on the Sun Ra-styled title piece. Connell’s phrasing is dry and penetrating, alternating legato squiggles with more emphatic, melody-charged bursts. Swell jockeys and jiggers his slide, shaping metallic slurs and whinnies that celebrate the classic tailgate technicians (“March of the Jazz Dinosaurs”) while retaining a modern peal and growl. As good as he and Nicholson are, the disc is arguably most valuable for the spotlight shown on Connell, who died just eight-months after the session, several days shy of his 76th birthday.

Derek Taylor