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Known for his work in the Chicago Underground with cornetist Rob Mazurek, as well as projects with guitarists Jeff Parker and Marc Ribot, saxophonists Fred Anderson, Jemeel Moondoc, James Brandon Lewis, and Rob Brown, trombonist Steve Swell, trumpeter jaimie branch, bassist Eric Revis, and multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore, Taylor has assembled a quintet of ‘dialogians’ whose concept of the music is historical, spatial, and localized: trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, tenor saxophonist Bryan Rogers, vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco, and bassist Matt Engle. Other than Finlayson, all of the musicians are currently part of or have a strong connection to the scene around Philadelphia, and Rogers and Engle have been working together since 2001.

There is a cohesive vision around five players, all unique in their understanding of the jazz landscape but united by context. Partly this is due to the leader’s encouraging contributions to the group’s book (all save Finlayson have compositions on the LP), a practice which carries over from his previous recordings. Taylor chalks this up to his studies with percussionist-composer Joe Chambers, who he linked up with at the New School at age 19.

Chambers appears on numerous legendary Blue Note sessions, was in the percussion ensemble M’Boom, and recorded under his own name for labels like Muse, Finite, Baystate, Denon, and Savant. The second side of vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s 1965 LP Components consists of four of Chambers’ works, recorded when he was just 23. Taylor remembers “when I was studying with him he’d say ‘you should always be writing music, and whenever you go into a session, whoever you’re recording with you can say ‘hey, would you mind looking at my composition? Maybe it will work well on your record.’ I took that advice to heart in bands I was in, and when I get opportunities to make my own records I want a group sound but I also want different compositional voices.”

The program of Smoke Shifter includes a pair of Taylor’s pieces, “Waltz for Meghan” and the lilting title track, Engle’s “Avian Shadow” and Vieira-Branco’s “October 26th” and “Paradise Lawns/October 29th” (two distinct tunes linked by a solo drum feature), with Rogers’ “Broken Horse” starting the proceedings. None are simple blowing lines and throughout, the writing and the playing feed each other. Vieira-Branco points out that “there is a cohesion in leadership––even how [Taylor] makes the tunes work together and orders the cuts on the record.” Taylor's perspective is that “in any project I do I gravitate to people who have their own sound and approach. It’s hard to find people who have that individuality and who also work well together.” That’s certainly true throughout Smoke Shifter in which advanced modern jazz arrangements and motifs––not far off from forebears like Chambers or Hutcherson––are central to the quintet’s language, but their movements are utterly contemporary, knotty and often atonal melodies alternately hanging in space or displaying a robust push-pull between surface and support.