Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra

Trumpeter Bill Dixon is a key figure in the history of free jazz who, as part of the Jazz Composers Guild and as a teacher, influenced a new generation of players. On 2008’s *Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra* he collaborates with the large, Chicago-based ensemble that is headed by the cornetist and composer Rob Mazurek. Dixon’s two compositions feature quicksilver solos standing out against the big sound created by band. (Dixon started out as a painter, and it’s easy to picture individual brush strokes standing out against a dense background.) The pieces shift gears in interesting ways: in one passage in “Entrances/Two,” the hypnotic rhythms of minimalism can be heard, making for a nice contrast to the massed sounds that precede it, and the eerie quietude that follows. The Mazurek-penned “Constellations for Innerlight Projections (For Bill Dixon)” opens with the orchestra accompanying Damon Locks intoning a text. Later in the piece, the orchestra creates great blasts of sound; at other times, artfully smeared and smudged brass tones emerge, along with mysterious thickets of dissonance.