The following are the best of the jazz releases that crossed my desk this summer. For one reason or another, they are all recommended hot-weather listening.

 

Circus Money by Walter Becker (From Dh65)

Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan were arguably the most interesting songwriting team in pop music since Lennon and McCartney. Circus Money is like half a Steely Dan album – and this half is better than most fulls these days.

The CD combines the best of Becker's influences, from Booker T and the MG's to Robby Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar, the Eagles and Al Green. The rhythms lope, the structures are loose, the harmonies are advanced and the textures minimal. There are no fortissimos, and the recording never loses its sense of irony. Chris Potter seems to have discovered how to play jazz saxophone with a rock band.

If it wasn't so interesting, it might be soothing. Listening to it makes me think of reading Graham Greene in a hammock under a leafy tree on a hot afternoon. Or Oscar Wilde. Either way, the living is easy.

 

The Croydon Concert by Art Pepper (From Dh80)

After he arrived in Los Angeles from New York, trombonist Jimmy Cleveland remarked how hard it was to play the blues under a palm tree. The late Art Pepper, who grew up in the West Coast city, was one of the few who knew how to do that. What separates the great from the merely good is being willing and able to deal with your emotions in public more than demonstrating your musicality and practicing a lot. To never play the same thing twice requires taking risks.

Pepper plays the saxophone as though he has nothing left to lose; he already has come back from losing everything. He is betting the bank, his heart is on his sleeve, his fingers are moving on their own, his will is overpowering.

In his autobiography, Straight Life, Pepper wrote that the first time he used heroin, he knew that was how he wanted to feel for the rest of his life. He was in and out of prison on drug charges for the better part of a decade. Recorded in 1981 in Croydon, England, this two-CD package came on the market for the first time earlier this year. Like Sue Mingus with Charles, Pepper's widow Laurie, who co-wrote Straight Life, has been working to preserve her late husband's work (thus the name of her record company).

The rhythm section formed by the Bulgarian pianist Milcho Leviev, the bassist Bob Magnusson and Carl Burnett on drums, burns. They play as though their lives depend on it.

This is Pepper's "comeback" record.

He was one of the few alto saxophonists who dared not to sound like Charlie Parker, but he maintained a comparable energy level. It is almost as though bebop itself has come back... not that it ever left.

 

Kinsmen by Rudresh Mahanthappa (From Dh65)

Born in Trieste, Italy, the Indian-American, saxophone-playing Mahanthappa grew up in Boulder, Colorado, and now lives in New York.

Collaborating with his kinsman, the Indian "Emperor of the Saxophone", Kadri Golpinath, Mahanthappa combines the rhythmic diversity and harmonic complexity of jazz with the melodic and metrical rigor of Indian classical music.

Mahanthappa is a key figure in the New York scene of composers/improvisers.