Since the mid-'90s, pianist/composer Myra Melford's quintets such as the Extended Ensemble, the Same River, Twice, the Tent, and Be Bread have been among her most adventurous and inimitable groupings -- and so one greets the arrival of her latest five-piece, Snowy Egret, with high anticipation. Released by Enja/Yellowbird in March 2015, Snowy Egret's eponymous debut album features Melford compositions inspired by Uruguayan author, historian, and journalist Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy; the quintet performed the music in November 2013 at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as part of Melford's multimedia Language of Dreams project, which also included dance, video, and spoken word. Although the hourlong Snowy Egret is divorced from the visual and spoken elements of Language of Dreams, it stands strongly as a purely musical experience, with the pianist joined by her self-described "killer band" featuring cornetist Ron Miles, guitarist Liberty Ellman, longtime Melford collaborator bassist Stomu Takeishi, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. The perpetually exploratory Melford is always crossing and blurring boundaries -- stylistic, cultural, geographic -- and never more so than on Snowy Egret, which, despite the music's South American literary inspiration, expands far beyond the expectations of "Latin jazz" to encompass the full range of her creative jazz sensibilities.

1		Language
2		Night of Sorrow
3		Promised Land
4		Ching Ching / For Love of Fruit
5		The Kitchen
6		Times of Sleep and Fate
7		Little Pockets / Everyone Pays Taxes
8		First Protest
9		The Virgin of Guadalupe
10		The Strawberry