Ed Wilkerson's 8 Bold Souls strikes most closely to AACM alum Henry Threadgill's great Sextett of the 1980s, from the rich complex compositions right down to the cello. Ernest Dawkins, however, mines a very different vein of Great Black Music, striking closest to an update of Lee Morgan's Blue Note work from the 1960s.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with having a good time (as Lester Bowie, one of the original figureheads made sure to show us before leaving this life). Dawkins isn't likely to cover Michael Jackson anytime soon, and his dress is dashiki not lab coat, but he's here to make the music move as much as Mr. Bowie was.

The saxophonist has made himself something of an AACM MC, writing songs that reflect Chicago life and dedicating many of his tunes to other members of the seminal organization (which regularly produces festivals in Chicago and New York and for years operated a music school in Chicago's south side). Here he expands his scope to the whole of African and African American music, building one track from a Senegalese rhythm, another from the New Orleans march tradition and a third invoking Eric Dolphy and Thelonious Monk but dedicated to AACM hornman Vandy Harris and, to keep things from being simple, written in 12-tone form. Along the way, Dawkins also encounters Southern Baptist spirituality (with the late trumpet player Ameen Muhammed in the role of the preacher) and rapper Kahari B (son of Bold Soul Mwata Bowden, one of the finest reed players in the Windy City) intoning "jazz to hip hop/beat box to bebop." It's an ambitious journey, and true to form Dawkins takes as his mission enjoyability over exhaustiveness.

His New Horizons Ensemble has undergone some changes in personnel since their first release which, like Capetown, was a live recording. After the Dawn has Risen was recorded at the Leverkusener Jazztage festival in Germany in 1991, when the band featured Reggie Nicholson on drums. A recent shift is the loss of the fine guitarist Jeff Parker, who might be better known from his involvement with Tortoise, Isotope 217 and the Chicago Underground Quartet. On Like Coping, his first record under his own name, Parker doesn't synthesize old and new jazz guitar as much as throw them in a hat and pull them out again. Cuts like "Holiday for a Despot" might excite the Isotope crowd with its staticky feedback and noisy wash, but much of the album is made up of good old-fashioned guitar trio ballads. With the worthy drummer Chad Taylor and bassist Chris Lopes, two more names familiar in Chicago's new breed of acid jazz, Parker proves his chops as a tasty jazz guitarist, laying it down more for mood than machismo.