Tomin’s debut full-length work, A Willed and Conscious Balance, answers a set of questions left unasked in recent years, as a new generation of artists re-energizes the tradition often referred to as “jazz” into its own directions: Where are the composers working with large ensembles? Who are the arrangers creating unexpected charts and dreaming up new orchestral sounds, layered tones and harmonically vibrant colors, the kind that have amended jazz’s “music for soloists” reputation since the swing era’s sunset? Yes, if you pay enough attention, you know that big-bands still walk the Earth, and composers are writing compelling charts for them; but they’re all-too-rarely making music that sounds both new and inviting, now and classic.

New and yet old. Upon hearing parts of the whole album’s early mix, a high-school bandmate of Tomin’s who remains a confidante, said that it sounded a lot like the music he talked about making even back then. Its individual sounds, its humanist ideals, its shared accessibility and difficulty, its sense of group rather than of a star soloist. If the tradition often referred to as “jazz” continues to move forward — and it always will, whether all of us get to hear it on recordings or not — this is part of the balance required of its continued travels. Willed and conscious.