Largely out of sight of the media glare of New York, Chicago has developed one of the brightest, most progressive jazz scenes in the US today. Thanks to a handful of dedicated small jazz labels, the music of Chicago's young firebrands -- heard in such bands as Eight Bold Souls, the Ritual Trio, and the NRG Ensemble -- has made it out of the heartland to a wider audience. Now two recent releases on independent Chicago labels -- Fred Anderson's Birdhouse (Okkadisk) and Ari Brown's Ultimate Frontier (Delmark) -- document compelling work by two important senior members of the Windy City's thriving scene.

Although he remained active as a player for many years while he managed a Southside club called the Velvet Lounge, Fred Anderson, a founding member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), rarely recorded. Last year's blistering Destiny (Okkadisk), with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Hamid Drake, ranks as one of the great "comeback" albums in recent jazz. Birdhouse proves it was no fluke. The 67-year-old Anderson is simply one of the most original voices on his instrument playing in a contemporary idiom.

Even in the loosest and most high-energy free-jazz structures, Anderson's soul-stirring music maintains a sensuous elegance reminiscent of great tenderhearted tough guys like Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster. His tone is dark and hard, and his solos seem to spiral down and in, burrowing deeper and deeper toward an elusive center, instead of rising up and out toward a far-away peak. Like his swing-era predecessors -- or like Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, for that matter -- Anderson knows how to make his linear improvisations flow and progress logically. Even 19-minute marathons like the title track hang together without strain. The band -- featuring longtime partner Drake on drums, along with pianist Jim Baker and bassist Harrison Bankhead -- form a tight unit that adds to the atmosphere of thoughtful excitement and adventure that makes this one of the year's best albums.

Saxophonist Ari Brown is another Chicago homebody, but his debut as a leader is anything but provincial. Brown, 52, has also made only a handful of albums, most notably with Lester Bowie and Kahil El' Zabar's Ritual Trio (Renaissance of the Revolution, also on Delmark, is especially good). Like Anderson, Brown keeps sight of his roots, but he knows how to get them to grow in new soil.

Ultimate Frontier cuts a wide stylistic swath through the jazz canon, but there's no sense of confusion. Music that swings this hard has no time for identity crises. Brown has a big, tree-trunk sound, and he controls it with the precision of a master, using slurs, hoarse growls, gospel moans, and a wide vibrato to color phrases. His sense of pacing and development are also signs of his maturity. His solo on "One for Luba" flows with the grace of a terraced waterfall, tumbling through a series of phrases, then pooling at a repeated riff, shaded or lightened by his keen sense of color, before moving on again. On "Big V," a virile mid-tempo romp, Brown crafts a thematically coherent solo that unfolds with compelling urgency. Then on "Lester Bowie's Gumbo Stew," he grounds his speechlike phrasing and altissimo wailing in a rolling New Orleans beat, giving the rhythm section of pianist Kirk Brown, bassist Yosef Ben Israel, and drummer Avreeayl Ra a chance to display their versatility as well.

Anderson and Brown, in their big-hearted, self-assured acceptance of the whole jazz tradition, lift their respective albums above the stingy confines of the polemical neo-boppers. Equipped with a larger historical vocabulary, their music represents jazz expression at its deepest, most individual, and most powerful.