Eric’s New Combinations serves as a rousing fanfare to this entirely wonderful new album. The rhythm section is locked in, the front line is tight, the solos are fluid and spirited—all signs that this combination of musicians has many more musical treats in store for the listener’s pleasure.

New Combinations is not only a reference to the title tune of the 2013 album Combinations: Live at the Jazz Estate by the Eric Jacobson - Eric Schoor Quintet, but also a reference to the innumerable changes that have occurred in the past 9 years—and, of course, in Eric’s life in particular. If you’re into analogies and literary allusions (Dennis?), you might consider this album to be Eric’s musical Odyssey. The sequence of tunes on the album, each of them conveying different moods and eliciting various emotions, seem to me to follow a narrative arc. I’ll say a bit more about this below, but I won’t push this idea too far because, frankly, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the music. And the music here is great! All you need to do is listen—and I mean really listen—to the exclusion of everything else. This is not background music. If you’re reading these notes while listening, or doing the dishes, or anything else, I urge you to stop trying to multitask and just immerse yourself in the music.