Byron says the title “Bug Music” comes from an old episode of The Flintstones, in which Fred, Wilma, and all the other cavemen and women of Bedford are nauseated by the new “Bug Music with them four insects”—a parody at the time of the Beatles. Just as most adults (real and cartoon) initially hated the Beatles, so many still don’t get Raymond Scott (whose music later became famous as the soundtrack for Carl Stallings cartoons) or even very early Ellington. (The lively but rarely covered Duke tunes he plays here are “The Dicty Glide,” “Cotton Club Stomp,” and “Blue Bubbles.”) I vaguely remember an interview in which Byron said he also made the album as a response to the “neo-classical” jazz leaders of the day (especially Wynton Marsalis) who, in the process of turning the Duke into a sacred figure, destroyed all of his fizz. (Marsalis and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra have since improved on his score.)

Yet Byron made, and still makes, a compelling case that this music is as intricate, appealing, in some ways primitive, in other ways amazingly sophisticated, as anything deserving our attention. It’s fast, wildly fun, and eye-blinkingly difficult—and Byron and his sextet kept it both airtight and raucously loose: an even harder combination to sustain. His band at the Standard was different from the one on the album, except for pianist Uri Caine (who has no peer at this sort of thing), yet they too were a top-notch crew (Rob DeBellis, reeds; Ralph Alessi, trumpet; Mark Helias, bass; Ben Wittman, drums), and they played with no shortage of vim.

Byron is the most virtuosic and versatile of jazz clarinetists, and the gig was part of a weeklong stay at the Standard—in celebration of his 50th birthday—featuring a different Byron-led band each night. He has rarely played Bug Music in public all these years, and I hope the full house and its rowdy cheers convinced him to do it some more.

Rollins, still strong and agile at 78, remains not only the “saxophone colossus” (as he’s been dubbed since his album of that title 51 years ago) but also the last heroic figure of jazz—the soloist (usually a horn player) who stands at the front of the bandstand and unleashes his soul through the frantic majesty and force of his long improvisations, much as an Action Painter would on his canvas. (Rollins might be considered the de Kooning of modern jazz, in that both kept their focus on form—de Kooning on life figures, Rollins on songs. Parlor game: Identify parallels between modern jazz and modern art. Ornette Coleman=Pollock, Monk=Picasso, Cecil Taylor=Gerhard Richter… what are your picks?)

A truism about Rollins is that he’s more thrilling live than in the studio; most of his best albums have been recorded live (A Night at the Village Vanguard, Our Man in Jazz, G-Man…). For many years, a fan named Carl Smith has been collecting bootleg tapes of Rollins concert tapes. Rollins once kept Smith at a distance; a few years ago, he started bringing him into the tent and listening to some of those tapes. He also began to play back tapes that he himself had been making at concerts.

Road Shows Vol. 1 consists of seven tracks—from live gigs around the world, between 1980 and 2007—that Rollins himself has selected personally. This itself is eyebrow-raising. Rollins is famously his own worst critic; he thinks that almost everything he’s ever played falls short. One can assume, then: If Rollins finds these tracks at least acceptable, they must be sensational—right?

As it turns out, yes, very right. I’ve seen Rollins play live maybe 20 times in as many years. Often he’ll take some time to build up in the course of a set, repeating some passage over and over, with slight variations, until suddenly he locks into some pulse of the universe and the magic takes hold. It’s unfathomable (to me anyway) exactly what he’s doing, but it has both nothing and everything to do with what’s going on around him, it goes beyond modes or chord changes yet rides the music’s rhythm and tempo without a skip and, when he pops out of his spell and glides back down to earth, he does it seamlessly, as if he’s been here all along. It’s a great night if he gives us 15 minutes of this magic. This CD is like—well, it is—the best of a half-dozen such great nights.

The final track is “Some Enchanted Evening,” taken from his concert last year at Carnegie Hall with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Christian McBride (I reviewed that concert at the time, in this blog and in the New York Times), and the effect is something different. Rollins is no longer in heroic mode; he’s playing with peers, engaging in an equilateral trio, the three great musicians bouncing ideas and phrases off one another and listening to them ricochet back. It’s breathtaking, intimate, and a perfect way to wrap up this nearly perfect album.

The sound quality is, well, less than perfect, as might be expected of a live concert that wasn’t meant to be released. The four tracks that were recorded straight off of the band’s mixing board are better—richer, better-balanced, warmer—than the three tracks taken from Carl Smith’s collection; but on all of them, Rollins’ horn is a bit honkier than it really is, perhaps because he likes to walk around while he plays and so attaches a microphone to the bell; we’re hearing the mic as much as the horn.

More good news, though: This is, notice, Vol. 1. There’s much more where this came from, and from every phase of his long career.

The problem, of course, is that it’s Election Night. What to do: listen to music or follow the returns? It turns out, both is an option. Ben has invited me (in my guise as a Slate columnist) and Brooke Gladstone, co-host and managing editor of NPR’s On the Media (she’s also my wife), to sit on the side of the stage with our laptops and, between songs, provide up-to-the-moment reports and analysis of how the vote’s going. Should be fun.

The Jazz Standard is in New York City, on E. 27th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30. It sports some of the city’s finest acoustics and the best food of any jazz club (ribs are a specialty). In case you’re wondering, I’m not making a dime off the gig. (And I promise not to play my saxophone.)

The session was recorded in 1993, and may have been considered too off-handed for public distribution, but this looseness—like a casual conversation—accounts for its appeal, and I’m grateful to be hearing it now. (Hill died last year at age 75, after a long bout with cancer; Hamilton, at age 86, is still active.)

It begins with Hill coaxing a lovely, sinuous ballad from the keyboard; Hamilton enters with marching-band drum rolls; and they’re off. You wonder what the hell’s going on here, but soon the connection seems clear, either because you grow accustomed to it or because the players subtly maneuver toward one another, probably a bit of both. Here and there, it’s a train wreck, but mainly it’s invigorating postmodernism, like a Frank Gehry structure, its styles and motifs raging against the environment and each other but somehow, in the final effect, hanging coherent and true.

If you’re new to Andrew Hill, there are other albums you should check out first: Passing Ships, Point of Departure, Black Fire, and a lovely three-disc set of solo-piano reissues in Mosaic’s Select series, Mosaic Select 16: Andrew Hill. But Dreams Come True is very much worth a close listen too.

The sound quality is straightforward and fine.

At the late set last Tuesday, she played mainly her own compositions—lovely slow ballads and rousing up-tempo ditties, all teeming with wit and verve and a dash of whimsy. I’ve been watching her for a few years now (she plays regularly at Barbes, a small club in my Brooklyn neighborhood), and she just keeps getting better. Her writing is more complex yet no less straightforward; that is, there’s more going on in the harmonies and rhythms, but they’re so well integrated with the melody and mood, you wouldn’t know it. Her playing is more fluent, her improvisations more adventurous, her leaps more seamless.

Many of the songs she played come from her new CD, Crossing the Field (Koch), which features Moran, guitarist Bill Frisell, and a string orchestra. It’s a terrific album, though I must say the massed strings round off the music’s edges; I prefer the leaner quartet and some of her earlier albums, especially 12 Songs and Shalagaster. The sonics are excellent on all her albums,

Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee is a shiveringly sensuous album, recorded for Decca, first as an EP in 1953, then expanded to an LP in ’56. Capitol did the same with June Christy’s Something Cool, and the two albums have more in common than the fact that both singers were Hitchcock blonds who’d spent time fronting Stan Kenton’s big band. Both albums are drenched in sophisticated sex and mystery (though the Christy plunges deeper into melancholy). The arrangements, with Jimmy Rowles on piano and Pete Condoli (identified on the album as “Cootie Chesterfield”—for contractual reasons?), are rich and just a little dissonant without losing their swing. The mono sound is clear; Lee’s voice is in your face, and appealingly so.

Miles Davis’ ’Round About Midnight was the trumpeter’s first album for Columbia, in 1956, and featured John Coltrane on tenor, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums—the same band that backed him on the Prestige “marathon” sessions just months earlier. A couple of the earlier albums are more consistently top-notch (Workin’ and Relaxin’), but this one is just as hard-driving on the uptempos and as crisp and moody on the ballads, especially the title track (maybe the most galvanizing version of Monk’s anthem), “All of You,” and “Bye, Bye Blackbird.” Columbia’s sound was equal to that of Rudy Van Gelder’s as well.

John Coltrane’s Impressions, was a follow-up to his Live at the Village Vanguard, both on Impulse. Two of its four tracks were recorded live at the same club, a few months later, in 1961 and ’62, with the same quartet (McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums, with, on one of the tracks, “India,” Reggie Workman added as a second bass and Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet). The others were studio quartet dates, one with Jones on drums, one with Roy Haynes—and for that reason the album is slightly less mesmerizing than the first live album, though just slightly; both albums, together, contain some of the most thrilling jazz on disc. Van Gelder’s live sound is captivating, especially those crashing cymbals. (If you want more of this, check out the four-CD box-set, The Complete Live at the Village Vanguard; it’ll leave you sweating.)

PAUL BLEY, ABOUT TIME (Justin Time). Paul Bley is one of the melodic avant-gardists who emerged in the mid-to-late ‘50s, searching for a way out of be-bop’s harmonic maze in the wake of Charlie Parker (others included Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Charles Mingus, and George Russell), and Bley—who’s played piano with all of them—may possess the subtlest charms. His solo albums are gems, and this, his latest, may be the most indigo sparkler. His style is spare, even stark, yet it’s amazing what range and depth of emotions he can tap with the slightest shift of a chord or an interval. Mesmerizing stuff, quietly romantic, deserving close attention. Superbly recorded, too.

CARLA BLEY BIG BAND, APPEARING NIGHTLY (ECM). Paul Bley’s ex-wife is, of course, a fine pianist and excellent composer-arranger in her own right, and this live recording of her 16-piece big band is the best thing she’s done in years. Like the other Bley, she has a knack for eking complex sensations from simple phrases—here by combining them, mixing, matching, setting them off against one another, and knowing just which ensemble colors should infuse which songlines or harmonies. The tunes evoke the entire span of jazz history, with wit, splash, swing, and a little funk. Excellent sonics for a live session, too.

DAVID MURRAY & MAL WALDRON, SILENCE (Justin Time). David Murray has recorded duet sessions with many pianists—John Hicks, D.D. Jackson, Randy Weston, Dave Burrell—but my guess is no project was more daunting than this one. Pianist Mal Waldron (who died in 2002, the year after this album was recorded) laid down his block chords and harmonies with a stern rhythmic discipline and a kaleidoscope of tonal colors, leaving enough space for only the most agile duelers to roam free. Steve Lacy knew how to navigate the shoals, but few others succeeded. Murray, of course, is one of the most agile players around, on tenor sax or bass clarinet (he blows both here), so the results are at least mixed. On a few tracks, the two never quite jell. On most of them, though, Murray maneuvers into the narrow speedway and coasts, floats, soars, and turns cartwheels, without ever losing the pulse. The sound, while not matching Murray’s best on Black Saint or DIW, is good enough.

WILLIE NELSON & WYNTON MARSALIS, TWO MEN WITH THE BLUES (EMI). Wynton has always played his best jazz trumpet when his brow is furrowed the least, and there’s no grimacing here. Willie sings some of his hits and some standards (“Bright Lights Big City,” “Night Life,” “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind”); his voice isn’t in the best shape, but it’s drenching with authentic, mirthful blues. Wynton blows his ass off. The rest of the band is good, too. This was recorded live in a one-time concert at Lincoln Center; the sound is fine. Sheer fun.

Next time: Reissues.

A personal PS: Those of you still checking this space may have noticed that haven’t been lately. I’ve been working on a book at a crazy pace on a tight deadline—writing literally every day, leaving time only for my Slate column (for which I’m contractually obligated, though I’ve cut back on it, too) and, very nearly, nothing else, certainly no other writing. If something truly extraordinary happens jazz-wise (as it did tonight), I’ll try to write about it. But short of that, consider this a see-ya till mid-September.

MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR: Herbie Hancock. (This is for his remarkable Joni Mitchell tribute-album, which crossed jazz and pop more compellingly than any fusion heard in some time. But I voted Ornette Coleman, for blowing as rivetingly as ever, and in some ways more gorgeously, at his concert at Town Hall.)

RECORD OF THE YEAR: Maria Schneider, Sky Blue. (Yes!)

REISSUE/HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE YEAR: Charles Mingus, Cornell ‘64. (Ditto!)

REISSUE BOX SET: Roy Haynes, Life in Time. (Yes again; it’s an illuminating collection. This is getting oddly monotonous.)

COMPOSER: Maria Schneider. (Who else?)

MALE SINGER: Andy Bey. (Well, I must confess, I didn’t vote for anybody.)

FEMALE SINGER: Abbey Lincoln. (I prefer her protege, Kendra Shank.)

SMALL ENSEMBLE: Ornette Coleman Quartet/Quintet. (Me, too.)

LARGE ENSEMBLE: Maria Schneider Orchestra. (Um-hmm.)

TRUMPETER: Terence Blanchard. (Ordinarily, I’d pick Dave Douglas, but nobody particularly knocked me out this year. If pressed, I’d go with Douglas by default.)

ALTO SAXOPHONE: Ornette Coleman. (Right, right, right.)

TENOR SAXOPHONE: Sonny Rollins. (Yes. And jazz is a young man’s game, no?)

PLAYER OF INSTRUMENT RARE IN JAZZ: Scott Robinson. (He’s become really, really good, and there’s nobody who plays so many reeds.)

PIANIST: Hank Jones. (Well, c’mon, he’s very good—not just “very good for 88 years old,” but by whatever standards you choose. But Jason Moran is still my man, followed closely by Frank Kimbrough, whose solo album this year, Air, is staggering. Fred Hersch, Paul Bley, Brad Mehldau, and—especially if he struck out on his own more often—Ethan Iverson are up there, too. Keith Jarrett is still on my s**t list.)

BASSIST: Christian McBride. (I can’t complain about this choice, especially given his agile performance with Sonny Rollins and Roy Haynes at Carnegie Hall. But I’d give higher marks to Ornette’s bassist, Tony Falanga; to his former bassist, Greg Cohen; and, his long-ago bassist, Charlie Haden, at least in his peak moments, which I saw him hit at the Village Vanguard not long ago.

DRUMMER: Roy Haynes. (Definitely gets the silver, but the gold goes to the unfathomably amazing Paul Motian. See the link to Charlie Haden above.)

CLARINETIST: Anat Cohen. (Yes, as I’ve written here a number of times, though the album of hers that I’ve praised, Poetica, is much better than anything she’s done before or since.)

GUITARIST: Bill Frisell. (Yes, at his best, there’s no one better; his latest album, History/Mystery, is a two-CD set—the first tight and cooking, the second loose and a bit soggy.)

STRINGS: Regina Carter. (No, plenty better here: Jenny Scheinman or Mark Feldman, violin; and certainly—what’s going on here, guys?—Erik Friedlander on cello.)

If you can’t make it to New York, a vast assortment of Leonard’s work is for sale at A Gallery for Fine Photography in New Orleans (maybe the best private gallery of its kind in the country). He’s also published a book of his photos, which are reproduced in exceptional quality.

Lucifer is the latest album featuring Bar Kokhba, Zorn’s Masada string sextet (a breathtakingly tight ensemble: Mark Feldman, violin; Erik Friedlander, cello; Marc Ribot, guitar; Greg Cohen, bass; Joey Baron, drums; Cyro Baptista, percussion), this time playing a slew of new Masada songs. Zorn started writing Masada music in the early ‘90s: initially 100 compositions (200 more in the years since), jazz heads, each written in one of the two “Jewish scales”—a major scale with the 2nd note flat or a minor scale with the 4th note sharp. Zorn wrote the tunes without specifying instruments. The first Masada band, and still the classic one, was a pianoless jazz quartet (Zorn, alto sax; Dave Douglas, trumpet; Cohen, bass; Baron, drums). But the string groups, which Zorn conducts, unveiled the harmonic colors. All their albums are beauts, and Lucifer may be the most satisfying: like a breezy drive along the Amalfi coast, with hairspin curves, taken at full speed, hard traction, and cool aplomb. You can dance to it, in your head and on the floor.

The Dreamers is silkier still. It features members of the Electric Masada band (Zorn, Ribot, and Bapista, plus Jamie Saft, keyboards; Kenny Wollesen, vibes; and Trevor Dunn, bass), but the music isn’t Masada; it’s more a mix of ska, Hawaiian wah-wah, blues, New Wave movie-scores, and howling rock and roll. It’s not the slightest bit camp. (Nothing of Zorn’s is.) These guys are into this deep, and they take you in with them.

The sound quality is superb, especially Lucifer, which is engineered by Jim Anderson, who has been sorely missed from jazz recordings since he ducked into academia a half-decade or so ago.

But now comes redeeming news. Two weeks ago, on March 26, the jazz critic Gary Giddins interviewed Rollins in a packed auditorium at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. In the course of the evening, Giddins revealed that Rollins has been listening to reels and reels of his concert tapes—collected over the past couple decades by a obsessive fan in Connecticut named Carl Smith—and that he has picked what he regards as the best tracks from a dozen or so of those concerts to release on a two-CD set sometime next year.

As every Rollins fan knows, the gap between his live concerts and his studio sessions has always been staggeringly vast, especially since the 1970s but even before then. (To my mind, his most thrilling albums have always been the live ones: A Night at the Village Vanguard, Our Man in Jazz, G-Man.) And as we also know, he is his own harshest critic, often dismayingly so (as with his decision not to release the Carnegie Hall concert). During the CUNY interview, Giddins played an excerpt of one of Rollins’ great solos from an album of the 1950s. The audience applauded. Rollins said, “Well, I’m glad you liked it. I found it excruciating.” Later, Giddins played a much longer tape—one that nobody has heard. It was from a concert in Kansas City in the 1980s, a jaw-dropping stream-of-consciousness solo that would have James Joyce gasping for breath. Rollins was fidgeting throughout, and afterward said, shaking his head, “I can do better than that.”

The point is that if Rollins approves of these tracks (when Giddins asked playfully if he liked them, he replied, “They're passable”), then this is destined to be one of the greatest albums of all time. Not all the selections have been finalized, and probably won’t be till later this year at the earliest. But make a note, and watch for it.

Unprepared improv can be thrilling, as long as the musicians go into it with a common conception, a talent for clairvoyance, and a commitment to keep the music moving forward. (Think Ornette Coleman’s ensembles, Miles Davis’ mid-‘60s quintet, or Konitz’s own trio with Elvin Jones on the great 1961 album, Motion.) None of these traits were on display at the Jazz Standard during the set I happened in on.

Maybe it was just a bad set. Konitz seemed aware that things had gone badly. After the maddening first medley, he sort of chuckled, muttered, “I’ve got to get out of here,” and pretended to walk off stage. Nate Chinen, the New York Times’ astute jazz critic, saw the late set on Tuesday and gave it a rave review, calling it “an astonishment of collective attention and unmannered epiphany.” It’s often a gamble with Konitz. This time, I drew a bum hand.

At 78, Coleman has scarcely changed in the 50 years that he’s been on the jazz scene—except, perhaps, that his tone has mellowed; there’s a burnished lyricism to his ballads and a burrowed depth to his blues. He played tunes old and new, frenzied and meditative. All were models of economy, grace, and Cubist swing. Classical influences were on keener display: not only “Sleep Talking” (from his Pulitzer Prize-winning album, Sound Grammar), which is built on Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, but also an improvisation on a Bach cello suite. Both sent chills; neither had a trace of “jazzing the classics” gimmickry.

The ensemble was a bit different from the last time I saw Coleman play, in 2006 at Carnegie Hall. His son, Denardo, is still on drums, Tony Falanga on upright bass, and Al McDowell on electric bass guitar. But Greg Cohen, who was a second acoustic bassist (he’d pluck while Falanga bowed), is gone; and McDowell, who before seemed a third pedal, has now found his place. He mainly strummed his instrument, the way most guitarists play a six-stringer, combining notes into chords—not as a harmonic foundation (which Coleman’s music doesn’t require) but rather as chromatic enrichment. It adds a steely edge to the fast tunes and a bright glow to the slow ones.

Falanga, it turns out, didn’t need Cohen; he can do the bowing and the plucking by himself. (Cohen is a terrific musician, but, in retrospect, two may have been a crowd; the basslines at Town Hall sounded clearer, more urgent.) Denardo, meanwhile, keeps growing as a drummer: he pounds out alternate rhythms with daring wit, rides his cymbal with an intense rush, and spans the dynamic range with a fine control. (Not long ago, he was too loud; now he can toss bombs yet stay in the background.)

But Ornette remains the leader and guide of this musical adventure. No one this side of Charlie Parker has eked such drenching yet unsentimental passion from an alto saxophone. He blows notes and intervals that constantly surprise (they often break all the rules) yet seem absolutely natural, even inevitable, as they cascade and roll in like waves.