Drummer Paul Motian, who emerged with the Bill Evans trio in the 1950s and died in 2011 at age 80, was a masterful performer with a fluid rhythmic sensibility that helped to free up the modern jazz tradition and make it more amenable to open time-keeping and unexpected textures. It's that lasting influence that is the focus of saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Jakob Bro's 2022 collaboration Once Around the Room: A Tribute to Paul Motian. Though separated by a generation, both artists have their own deep ties to Motian: the elder Lovano worked in one of the drummer's later trios featuring Bill Frisell, and Bro was a member of Motian's band that recorded 2006's Garden of Eden. Here they are joined by a cadre of like-minded artists, including bassists Larry Grenadier, Thomas Morgan, and Anders Christensen, as well as drummers Joey Baron and Jorge Rossy. Together, they commune over a series of original compositions inspired by Motian's work. The sole Motian piece that they tackle is the fittingly titled "Drum Music," a song Lovano originally recorded on Motian's 1985 album Jack of Clubs with Frisell. Beginning with a roiling drum solo, the song soon gives way to a boppish melody that Lovano and Bro play in unison with a guttural intensity. Later, Bro takes a solo, distorting his guitar sound with fractured, overdriven effects like a robotic sitar. Lovano responds in kind, spitting out a long volley of notes that sound like paint being scratched off a wall. The originals are no less adventurous, moving from Lovano's "As It Should Be" with its droney bass and echoey sax and guitar interplay to the spectral group improv of "Sound Creation," where Bro's crystalline chords and Lovano's mournful sax lines merge into a wave of shimmering, fractal space noise. Equally compelling is Lovano's "For the Love of Paul," a bluesy, off-kilter number that combines the rambling free-bop style of Ornette Coleman with the stop-start phrasing of Thelonious Monk. There's also Bro's "Song to an Old Friend," a delicate ballad that has the far-eyed introspection of a Radiohead song. All of this evokes the boundaryless creative spirit of Motian. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi