It’s bad enough that the days are get­ting shorter, but the light is going to be cut back an hour this Sun­day. It’s going to be dis­ori­ent­ing when you wake up, and dis­ori­ent­ing when you watch the sun go down in the mid­dle of the day. And that, on top of my aching back and now cold-engulfed head, has me seek­ing music full of sta­ble, solid sat­is­fac­tions. And so:

A quiet record that seems mod­est at first lis­ten, but leaves a lin­ger­ing sense of weight that has had me going back to it again and again. Assaf Kehati is out of the post-Metheny school of jazz gui­tarists, with a cool, limpid tone, matched by the under­stated play­ing of Alon Far­ber on sax­o­phones. The disc opens with “Call­ing Me Home,” which has a lovely sound. Far­ber winds his way around the tune and the band, and in com­par­i­son Kehati’s first solo­ing seems sub­dued, almost ret­i­cent. That’s where the sub­tle power lies.

Kehati is a thought­ful player, an under­rated and often mis­un­der­stood qual­ity in jazz. It’s not that he thinks out all his impro­vis­ing and becomes stiff, it’s just that he’s clearly thought about what it is he has to say, and so in the moment he’s coher­ent, artic­u­late, each note and ges­ture build­ing a larger con­text of mean­ing and expres­sion. Jazz is a demand­ing music to play at even an unre­mark­able level, so it’s a given — and some­thing often taken for granted — that jazz play­ing is inher­ently musi­cal. It’s easy to just take a solo a player is lay­ing out and think it’s good, when in fact good solo play­ing requires some­thing more above basic jazz musi­cian­ship, which is hav­ing some­thing to say.

In this music — and all the mate­r­ial was cre­ated by Kehati, includ­ing darkly mov­ing pieces like “The Most Beau­ti­ful Flower”  – the gui­tarist has a lot to say, all of it involv­ing. This is what makes for the sat­is­fac­tions of the disc: the sound of beau­ti­ful mod­ern jazz — and it is a beau­ti­ful record, a prime exam­ple of how so many of this gen­er­a­tion of jazz musi­cians are empha­siz­ing pure beauty — with a relaxed sur­face, fluid rhythms, and the sense that there’s some­thing impor­tant going on just past the level of imme­di­ate per­cep­tion. As much as he may be influ­enced by Metheny (and also Dave Holland’s Exten­sions record), it’s on the side of lead­ing a small-group through attrac­tive tunes and inven­tive inter­play. Kehati bal­ances inter­nal sub­stance with a gen­tle, but inex­orable for­ward move­ment, and that’s the thing that leads the lis­tener on. There have been many fine jazz gui­tar releases this year, and Flow­ers and Other Sto­ries joins them. You can order it at CD Baby.

Crowd-pleasing clas­si­cal music, to be sure, but pleas­ing through qual­ity, not pan­der­ing. Rimsky-Korsakov was a great mas­ter of color, and Stravinsky’s early bal­lets could not have been cre­ated with­out the older composer’s lessons and influ­ence. This is a gen­er­ous disc that book­ends a hand­ful of dra­matic over­tures with Capric­cio Espag­noland the Russ­ian Easter Over­ture, two of Rimsky-Korsakov’s finest works. The music is col­or­ful, lyri­cal, offer­ing noth­ing more pro­found than sheer beauty. And that’s awfully profound.

Frag­ments of this music will jog the mem­o­ries of many — the gor­geous “Vari­azioni” move­ment of the Capric­cio has one of the most famous melodies in clas­si­cal music. The per­for­mances here are excel­lent, recorded as Ger­ard Schwartz’s 25+ year tenure as music direc­tor of the Seat­tle Sym­phony came to a close. Under Schwartz, the orches­tra became one of the major regional sym­phonies in the coun­try, play­ing at a high level and empha­siz­ing lumi­nous color — another fine disc to hear is their new release of the Borodin Sym­phonies 1–3. The part­ner­ship also pro­duced an impor­tant series of record­ings of Amer­i­can orches­tral music on the Delos label, which Naxos is now in the process of reis­su­ing, includ­ing recent reprints of two bench­mark CDs of sym­phonies from Howard Han­son. All the ele­ments of superb music-making are here; musi­cal phras­ing, sen­si­tive dynam­ics and mod­u­la­tions of tempo, drive and con­vic­tion. Con­cer­mas­ter Maria Lar­i­onoff and Prin­ci­pal Horn John Cer­mi­naro are espe­cially fine. Recommended.

Fabian Almazan has been receiv­ing enough pub­lic­ity this fall to inspire envy in many a peer. A lot of it is deserved, his debut release, Per­son­al­i­ties (avail­able dig­i­tally, or pre-order the CD), is one of the more inter­est­ing and promis­ing jazz CDs of the year. It’s not per­fect, and doesn’t com­pletely ful­fill its pos­si­bil­i­ties, but the open-ended, ques­tion­ing nature of the music is refreshing.

Ala­mazan rounds out his trio with Linda Oh on bass and Henry Cole on drums, and plays some tasty elec­tric piano as well as the acoustic instru­ment. He’s also joined at times by a string quar­tet, open­ing the CD by play­ing an arrange­ment of the “Ada­gio” move­ment from Shostakovich’s String Quar­tet No. 10. These are the two ele­ments that obvi­ously stand out, and they are both intrigu­ing and dis­tract­ing. The Shostakovich arrange­ment passes the music between Almazan and the strings, the for­mer play­ing with some free­dom, the lat­ter tak­ing it straight. There’s also some elec­tronic pro­cess­ing laid on, for no appar­ent rea­son and with­out much effect. What’s win­ning about the arrange­ment is that, except for the tech­nol­ogy, he doesn’t do too much with mate­r­ial that is already great. Of course, the prob­lem with open­ing with Shosty is he’s a tough act to follow.

Almazan hangs in there pretty well, and it may be an odd crit­i­cism to say that the rest of the CD is very fine con­tem­po­rary jazz, with a sense of shape to the tunes and won­der­ful play­ing from the trio. But the open­ing track opens a door into a pas­sage of great, unset­tling, exploratory musi­cian­ship from which the rest of the disc turns away. There’s great lyri­cism, and an evoca­tive melan­choly which touch the heart and the mind. Like the pre­vi­ous two discs, there’s a solid­ity, a sense of seri­ous­ness with­out too much heav­i­ness. As the music is Alamzan’s responses to impor­tant peo­ple in his life, there’s a bitty feel­ing that is at odds with the sense of com­po­si­tion — the group is play­ing pieces, not tunes. But once the ears are inside each piece, the music is com­pletely win­ning. “H.U.G.S” and “The VIc­ar­i­ous Life” are two of many excel­lent tracks. Slightly frus­trat­ing, yes, but com­pelling … absolutely.