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Veteran bassist Leon Lee Dorsey and drummer extraordinaire Mike Clark have forged a deep simpatico together over the course of four projects. And while each outing has featured a different third guest, the rhythmic hookup between Dorsey and Clark has underscored those recordings. The special guest on their fourth outing, “Freedom Jazz Dance,” is the brilliant Cuban-born pianist Manuel Valera, a free-spirited musician with command of multiple idioms. Dedicated to the late Puerto Rican-born piano master Hilton Ruiz, whom Dorsey regularly played with in his last years, the collection of eight tunes highlights the same kind of bilingual musical aesthetic that Ruiz embraced throughout his amazing career.

     Chicago pianist Steve Million met guitarist Steve Cardenas and drummer Ron Vincent when they all lived in Kansas City in the late ‘70s, and by 1980 they fully realized their musical kinship, performing widely under the name Four Friends. It was with Million’s and Vincent’s move to New York in 1981 that the band ceased performing. In November, 2019 they reunited in New York, along with bassist John Sims, to see how the music had fared over the decades. The resulting disc, “What I Meant to Say,” is as much about the enduring relationships of these players over several decades as it is about the compositions of Million.

Also this week, the prolific award-winning guitarist Chris Standring is joined by Randy Brecker, Peter Erskine, Harvey Mason and a 19-piece orchestra in putting his unique spin on songs from the Great American Songbook on “Wonderful World”;

the supergroup Band of Other Brothers, featuring Jeff Coffin, Jeff Babko, Will Lee, Nir Felder and Keith Carlock, unveils its second collection, “Look Up!”;

      and drummer Jae Sinnett’s “Altered Egos” is a trio session with pianist Allen Farnham and drummer Terry Burrell.