Ben Monder & Bill McHenry

A progressive stylist with an ethereal, edgy approach, guitarist Ben Monder has been active since the mid-'80s, working with artists such as Jack McDuff, David Binney, and Maria Schneider, among others. His own albums, including 1997's Flux, 2000's Excavation, and 2013's Hydra, are all inventive productions combining a vanguard improvisational aesthetic with ECM-styled atmospherics -- a vibrant amalgam he championed on 2015's Amorphae with drummers Paul Motian and Andrew Cyrille. Monder was among the cast of jazz musicians chosen by David Bowie to record his final album, Black...