Reeds player Bennie Maupin was on Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, then joined Herbie Hancock’s most adventurous band, Mwandishi, and stuck around for the keyboardist’s turn toward hard funk with the Headhunters. Two other members of Mwandishi, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart, are on this dreamlike album, along with trumpeter Charles Sullivan, percussionist Bill Summers, and second drummer Freddie Waits. The pieces have a drifting, cloudlike quality, with the drummers shifting restlessly in the background as the horns play long, meditative notes, the bass drones, and Hancock’s piano ripples out from the center of it all. The 10-minute title piece is more abstract and spacious than Miles or Mwandishi ever got, Maupin keening as the keyboard and drummers pulse and rattle.

– Phil Freeman

Anyone who thinks that ECM is only about European cool should check out the American warmth of The Jewel In The Lotus, the leader debut of reedman Bennie Maupin, who teams up with his Mwandishi crewmates Herbie Hancock, Buster Williams, and Billy Hart, along with drummer Frederick Waits, percussionist Bill Summers, and trumpeter Charles Sullivan. By turns ritualistic (“Excursion”) and romantic (“Past Is Past”), this collection of facets indeed constitutes a jewel to behold for its slow-motion approach. Revisiting this album reveals new details every time, each more evocative than the last.

– Tyran Grillo