Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify
In 2014, after more than a decade in New York City, and traveling the world with Freddie Cole, Michael Buble and others, guitarist Randy Napoleon found himself in the middle of the thriving jazz center that Lansing, Michigan had become since bassist Rodney Whitaker’s arrival almost 25 years before. Along with Napoleon’s bandmates pianist Rick Roe, Whitaker and drummer Quincy Davis, the prolific jazz composer Gregg Hill has added an energized compositional voice to that scene, enticing Napoleon, Whitaker, Michael Dease and others into inspired collaborations. His new album, “The Door is Open,” finds the guitarist free to stretch, bend and expand on a new collection of tunes by Mr. Hill.

For its tenth anniversary release, the Black Art Jazz Collective, hailed by DownBeat magazine as “a powerhouse of contemporary jazz talent,” offers ten exciting and unique works that speak to both artistic freedom and musical sensibility relative to the tenor of our times. The band on “Truth to Power” features an all-star line-up, including founding members Wayne Escoffery, Jeremy Pelt, James Burton III, Xavier Davis and Johnathan Blake who are joined by current members Victor Gould, Rashaan Carter and Mark Whitfield, Jr. As Escoffery explains, “I formed Black Art Jazz Collective as a ensemble of African American musicians, celebrating Black culture and the origins of the music through original compositions with unapologetic pride.”

Also this week, Kansas City-based trombonist and composer Brian Scarborough blends tradition with innovation in presenting his second album as a leader, “We Need the Wind”; Spokane, Washington-based saxophonist and composer David Larsen teams up with a group of East Coast musicians he met when they were on tour in the Northwest for his new disc, “Cohesion”; and vocalist Vanisha Gould and pianist Chris McCarthy team up for their first release as a duo, “Life’s a Gig.”