Stimulating new sounds are found in plenty on Trickster (Pi, out next month) from one of the finest current guitar harmonic theorists-into-practice out there. Miles Okazaki, above, works out of New York and if you love the music of Vijay Iyer and Steve Coleman (whose band Five Elements Miles has played in and recorded with) then he’s another wildly inventive pace setter for new directions in the music following their examples. He grew up in Port Townsend, Washington, and began gigging on electric guitar in his early teens. In the 1990s he moved to New York and went on the road with saxist Stanley Turrentine and later singer Jane Monheit. His albums show an active mind full of ideas and solutions to harmonic problems while never forgetting how to groove and communicate. His book, Fundamentals of Guitar, was published in 2015.