In a time marked by unpredictability and absurd realities, music imbued with spontaneity and improvisation seems especially relevant. Internationally recognized trumpet player and composer-producer-entrepreneur Dan Rosenboom embraces the chaos and seeks to endow us with hope and joy along the way.

Take songs from the Middle Ages and present them using the heavenly voices of three female singers plus a pair of musical-genre-crossing instrumentalists and you have the group Voxfire and their new modern-meets-medieval-mashup recording, FONTIS, on Orenda Records.

Naked Allies, a collaboration between jazz musicians from Dublin and New York City, is a new quartet that weds jazz with certain undercurrent of rock aesthetic, and unfettered improvisation with tenacious composition. Alternately intense and complex, then melodic and beautiful, there is a duality at play always here, with defined compositions giving way to poignant yet challenging solos.

NOICE presents a futuristic sonic landscape in a riling, cinematic album that plays out like a hypnotic space opera. In the face of our technologically exploding culture, Alexander Noice explores the elusive nature of identity and self-discovery amidst an increasing array of distraction and affectation.

Desert Music, the debut EP from Los Angeles percussionist Ben Rempel, is a fresh, inter-genre exploration of time at different scales. Through a combination of minimalist percussion compositions and improvisation by an ensemble of distinctive musicians, Desert Music reflects on the grand, hostile, fragile, and rough beauty in Southern California’s deserts.