There’s an attractive searching quality to the music heard on the latest collection of ambitious, atmospheric compositions from Avishai Cohen. The Israeli-born bassist, a one-time Chick Corea sideman who’s been leading his own sessions since the mid-’90s, returns on his 12th album to familiar musical terrain.

Seven Seas offers folk melodies from his homeland; Middle Eastern textures, including colourful contributions from oud and guitar player Amos Hoffman, a regular associate; feathery pop vocals from the leader and Karen Malka; and quick-shifting time signatures. Underneath it all lies a surging ocean of piano (Cohen, Shai Maestro), strings, mellow horns and, of course, Cohen’s pulsing, cascading, beautifully timbred basslines.

The title track, one of several occasions on the disc when Cohen drives his music as hard as he typically does in concert, opens with a fluttering bass-and-vocal figure, trailed by Maestro’s hyper piano and Itamar Doari’s urgent percussion, and offers ample space for the bassist’s zigzagging figures and unfettered solo improvisation. “Ani Aff,” similarly, moves at a trot, with Cohen doubling Maestro’s lines in support of breezy vocals and the pianist’s smartly turned horn arrangement.

The slowly shifting “Hayo Hayta” opens up for some emotive soprano playing by saxophonist Jimmy Greene. Cohen demonstrates his prodigious chops again on the rising-and-falling “Two Roses” (Shnei Shoshanim), and closes the album on a somber note, with the traditional Sephardic-Jewish Ladino song “Tres Hermanicas Eran.”

Cohen, who has returned to Israel, comfortably straddles several genres. It’s safe and probably accurate to think of his work as an appealing fusion of jazz and world music, with hints of pop, Third Stream and even New Age in the mix. It’s to his credit that the blend never comes off as less than organic.

Listeners unexcited by the glossy, beat-heavy, smoothness of 2005’s Paris Blue and its two successors will be pleasantly surprised by the direction Kyle Eastwood takes on Songs From the Chateau, his fifth album as a leader.

The virtuoso bass doubler and his regular bandmates holed up on a 15th-century estate in the French countryside and emerged with a mostly acoustic recording that plugs into soulful grooves and moves from hard bop to modal territory to Caribbean rhythms. Throughout, Eastwood demonstrates monster bass chops.

The disc’s nine compositions, and their titles, point to Eastwood’s global musical and geographical influences, from the Art Blakey flavorings of opener “Marciac,” which gives rise to bracing solos by trumpeter Graeme Flowers and tenor saxophonist Graeme Blevins, to soul-jazz closer “Down at Ronnie’s,” which has the horn players sparring before turning things over to the leader for another impressive round on his five-string bass guitar. Hints of warmer climes, and Sonny Rollins tunes, emerge from “Café Calypso,” and “Andalucia” comes with Latin-tinged rhythms, a mournful melody and, courtesy of the leader’s upright bass, a droning figure and rubbery solo.

“Moon Over Couronneau,” named for the band’s recording digs, is a moody ballad, with Flowers’ flugelhorn, Blevins’ tenor and Andrew McCormack’s piano riding a pulsing groove supplied by Eastwood and drummer Martyn Kaine.

And the moody “Aperitif,” fronted with warm declarations by muted trumpet and burnished tenor, offers the leader another fruitful turn on upright—the sonics are woody and his technique is impeccable. Songs From the Chateau constitutes an altogether welcomed fresh start for a musician who no longer needs to be introduced as the son of the film star.

With the Zawinul Syndicate gone following the 2007 passing of its leader, and guitarist Fareed Haque exiting Garaj Mahal, who will carry the torch for the variety of fusion that blends organically with world music?

One candidate for the job is Human Element, a band essentially born as an outgrowth of pianist, synth wizard and vocoder manipulator Scott Kinsey’s 2006 album Kinesthetics (on which Zawinul served as executive producer). Rather than do a second recording with a cast of thousands, Kinsey put together a quartet with Armenian percussionist and singer Arto Tuncboyaciyan, who served a stint with the Zawinul Syndicate, electric bass monster Matthew Garrison and journeyman drummer Gary Novak.

The band’s self-titled debut pulsates with intoxicating rhythms; opens up for displays of instrumental virtuosity, particularly by Garrison; and, especially on the vocal tracks, hints at old-school prog rock. Funk is never very far away, either: “Shake It!” gets its kicks from synth blips and beeps, hyperactive drums and percussion, Garrison’s subdued popping and slapping, and Kinsey’s vocoder interjections. The tune is one of four penned by Kinsey, along with atmospheric opener “Introduction”; “The Human Element,” bubbling and hypnotic; and the searching “Essaouira,” one of the tracks most heavily influenced by the Zawinul school of world fusion.

Garrison’s tricky, stair-stepping lines underpin his “Izzy,” and his other contribution, “Cut.” With eight of the disc’s 14 tracks to his credit, Tuncboyaciyan’s compositions dominate. Particularly appealing are his “Speak With Your Eye,” with a sing-song vocal line attached to relentless, rubbery grooves, the call-and-response “Listen With Your Mouth,” and the pastoral “See With Your Ear.” If Human Element’s live shows are anything like their studio work, the sensory experience must be overwhelming.

Hard to believe, but Kenny Wheeler is officially an octogenarian: Has it really been that long since the Canadian-born brass man was breaking ground on the free-jazz scene?

His talents as a flugelhorn player, composer and arranger nevertheless remain potent, as he demonstrates on One of Many, an often-surprising three-way collaboration with longtime associate John Taylor on piano and bass guitarist Steve Swallow. Like much of Wheeler’s work, the music here is distinguished by layered subtleties and multiple moments of discovery. These are quietly powerful pieces masquerading as laidback chamber jazz.

Variously using long tones, slurs, low scoops and keening high notes, Wheeler offers a haunting melody and unpredictable solo before yielding to Taylor’s similarly searching lines and lush chording on “Now and Now Again.” Swallow, who wields a felt pick for a sound that’s resonant and clean in lower registers and bell-clear higher up, lays down a circular groove at the start of opener “Phrase 3.” Wheeler joins Swallow with a warm melody and Taylor enters for supportive colourings; following Taylor, Swallow offers pretty, unhurried curlicues that wind down the tune.

The aptly titled “Anticipation” has the flugelhornist and bassist engaging in contrapuntal conversations, while the stately “Old Ballad” indeed sounds like a classic of its kind, with Wheeler essaying a gorgeous theme and Swallow turning in a lyrical solo. And the pianist and bassist go it alone together on “Ever After (duo version),” a gem of intuitive interaction.

These 10 pieces sound decidedly forward-looking, like three journeymen players engaging in acts of artistic exploration.

John Scofield, A Moment’s Peace (Emarcy)

Ballads can be the most challenging tunes to play, because they can’t be artificially energized by way of accelerated tempos or gratuitous displays of chops. Likewise, the absence of those elements keeps some listeners from warming to the form.

John Scofield, not surprisingly given his range of abilities and musical interests, makes ballad playing seem easy and sound irresistible on A Moment’s Peace. The collection of slow-tempo gems finds the guitarist joined by like-minded younger players: frequent collaborators Larry Goldings on piano and organ and Scott Colley on upright bass, and, recording with Scofield for the first time, well-traveled drummer Brian Blade.

The program is about evenly split between originals and intriguing interpretations of familiarities, including a lovely version of the Beatles’ “I Will.” Sco also takes on Carla Bley’s haunting “Lawns” and imbues “Gee Baby, Ain’t I Good to You” with deep blues feeling, coloring inside and outside the lines and making listeners keen to hear where he’s going next. “You Don’t Know What Love Is” benefits from syncopated rhythm-section playing that hints at funk and reggae, and “I Loves You, Porgy” opens with spacey organ figures before the leader enters for a rubato reading.

The originals are similarly compelling, beginning with opening track “Simply Put,” its loping rhythms topped by a ringing, bleeding guitar figure—that familiar slightly overdriven burr—that evokes Americana. Other original standouts include the probing “Throw It Away” and the elegantly unhurried “Already September,” on which Scofield brings to mind Jim Hall. It’s all consistently laidback, yes, but those with discerning ears won’t find anything dull here. These musical currents move slowly but run deep.