Listen to this week’s playlist on YouTube and Spotify.

The music of Joel Harrison stubbornly defies categorization. From haunting psychedelia to rollicking Afro-Appalachian grooves, from the complex poly-everything of Charles Ives to the deceptively simple re-imagining of American folk ballads, Harrison is perhaps the most imaginative, inventive and inclusive artist in contemporary jazz music. The new CD, “Angel Band,” is the third in his acclaimed Free Country series of projects and features a unique mix of jazz interpretations of Americana, deeply felt arrangements of songs by iconic artists such as Johnny Cash and Bill Monroe. Many long-time allies from the first two records reappear here, including David Binney, Stephan Crump and Uri Caine.

     The jazz piano trio, a specialty with its own lineage and admirers, is currently alive and well. A keyboard master such as Cyrus Chestnut can imbue this tried-and-true format—whose practitioners range from Jell Roll Morton to Robert Glasper—with a relevance for today’s listeners and expand its parameters without losing sight of its historic past. For his new recording, “Kaleidoscope,” Cyrus has arranged eight compositions from the world of classical music, including pieces by W.A. Mozart, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Eric Satie, taking the classical themes through a series of rhythmic and harmonic turns and twists and subjecting them to a wildly innovative series of transformations. Completing his most recent trio are bassist Eric Wheeler and drummer Chris Beck.

Also this week, good friends Sean Smith on bass and Leon Parker on percussion get together to form The Humanity Quartet for its debut release, “Humanity,” which also includes saxophonist Joel Frahm and guitarist Peter Bernstein.

Keyboardist Jeff Lorber and bassist Jimmy Haslip are joined by reedman Andy Snitzer for the new Jeff Lorber Fusion CD, “Impact”.

 Saxophonist extraordinaire Doug Webb returns to the scene with a few of his “Fast Friends” on his eighth release for Posi-Tone records, a session featuring trombonist Michael Dease, pianist Mitchel Forman and veteran drummer Roy McCurdy.