Patricia Barber, Verse (Blue Note). We know who the megastars of vocal jazz and vocal sorta-jazz are, but Barber is the real deal: a singer/songwriter/bandleader/pianist who excels in all departments. Verse was a showcase for her sharp, literate lyrics; a show at the Regattabar in September was lagniappe.

Joe Lovano, Viva Caruso (Blue Note). Had Joe finally gone too far? A "concept" roots/world-music jazz album of Caruso arias and Neapolitan songs? Fear not, Lovano divided the album into two ensembles — the Opera House Ensemble and the Street Band — and made real jazz every inch of the way. He brought the Street Band to Scullers, with Gil Goldstein doubling on piano and accordion and Barry Reese doubling on drums and trumpet. Lovano is a great player in part because he is a great conceptualist.

Fully Celebrated Orchestra, Marriage of Heaven and Earth (Innova). With the addition of trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, you could say that the original FCO trio did become a true orchestra. Yes, there’s the heft of an extra horn, but saxist Jim Hobbs also got to expand his writing, setting up intertwining melodies for himself and Bynum over those ever-infectious FCO grooves from bassist Timo Shanko and drummer Django Carranza. A show at the Regattabar in July was also the occasion for a premiere of the "Tuft Today Milkshire Suite," a commission by Chamber Music America as a Doris Duke Foundation Jazz Ensemble Project New Work Grant.

Marty Ehrlich/Oliver Jackson, "A Garden" and The Long View (enja). For 10 weeks in the spring of 2000, jazz musician Ehrlich and painter Jackson worked in adjoining studios at Harvard’s Carpenter Center with the idea that they would collaborate on a piece dedicated to their old friend, the saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill (1940-1995). Jackson painted six huge canvases called collectively "A Garden"; Ehrlich wrote the symphonic-length work The Long View. Each represents a major statement by the artist, and together at the Carpenter Center’s Sert Gallery (through January 9) they create a unique space contemplation, extending the conversation between modern art and jazz.

Dave Holland Big Band, What Goes Around (ECM). The master bassist, composer, and bandleader took the ideas that have been percolating in his superb small groups for the past 15 years and stretched them out to the palette of a 13-piece band. Here was mobility, coloristic detail, and collective improvisation over Holland’s signature shifting grooves. Even more impressive, Holland himself wrote all the tunes and arrangements. The band delivered live at Berklee Performance Center in October.

Brad Mehldau, Largo (Warner Bros.); Jason Moran, Modernistic (Blue Note); Joshua Redman, Elastic (Warner Bros.). Three of the music’s young lions extended their reach into pan-stylistic statements that absorbed contemporary pop without compromising: Redman with his version of the organ trio; Moran with a solo piano disc that went from James P. Johnson to dub and back; and Mehldau with his version of — what? — Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Redman’s trio played Berklee, Mehldau’s peerless acoustic trio played a sublime set at Jordan Hall, and . . . where’s Jason? Maybe next year?

Branford Marsalis, Footsteps of Our Fathers (Marsalis Music). Big Brother had the nerve to launch his own label with an album of "covers" — two of them being Sonny Rollins’s "Freedom Suite" and John Coltrane’s "A Love Supreme." Once you got past the chutzpah, though, the band’s playing proved up to the challenge, and comparisons dropped away. With Ornette Coleman’s "Giggin’ " and John Lewis’s "Concorde" bookending the two big pieces, the album had a satisfying, concert-like narrative. At a powerful performance at Berklee in November, B and the boys offered selections from the album and from drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts’s excellent Bar Talk (Sony).

Davis S. Ware, Freedom Suite (AUM Fidelity). If Branford played Sonny with letter-of-the law articulation, Ware played him with countrified soul, Matthew Shipp’s rumbling chords adding a bit of gospel to the proceedings. Performing the piece at the Newport Jazz Festival, Ware’s quartet also managed to shake up the second stage.

Roscoe Mitchell & the Note Factory, Song for My Sister (Pi). The founder of the Art Ensemble of Chicago now teaches more than he tours, but this CD shows him still matching formal rigor with a free spirit. There are "free" blowouts for alto, trumpet, and rhythm section ("Sagitta"), plus an off-kilter melody over a parade rhythm with an outta-space music-box piano figure ("Step One, Two, Three"), gamelan with muted trumpet and piano ("The Megaplexian"), and even Ornette-like funk ("Count Off"). Come to think of it, Roscoe’s never stopped teaching.

Steve Lacy. Having accepted a position at New England Conservatory, the formidable composer who’s also the world’s foremost soprano saxophonist, Thelonious Monk scholar, and Paris jazz expatriate now lives in Brookline. How cool is that?