Linda May Han Oh, one of the most in-demand bass players on the scene and partner to jazz stars including Dave Douglas, Pat Metheny, Terri Lyne Carrington and Vijay Iyer, has been releasing albums under her own name since 2009, growing in stature as a leader/composer all the while.

The Glass Hours – though for a smaller group than 2019's Adventurine, and with much more exposure for Oh's sublime bass improvisations – sees her more explicitly addressing societal and global-political issues, spurred by the pandemic, Ukraine, and reflections on mortality and new motherhood. But if those sound like recipes for solemnity, Oh is anything but solemn. The opening 'Circles' is a zigzagging unison theme for the ever-unpredictable Mark Turner's tenor and Sara Serpa's range-vaulting vocals (Oh's writing for contrapuntal horn/voice lines is audacious throughout), developed over rhythm-jolting accompaniment from frequently dazzling Havana-born pianist Fabian Almazan. 'Antiquity' is an ethereal sung-and-spoken narrative on life's cyclical patterns; 'Chimera' a pristine pizzicato bass soliloquy giving way to a ferocious piano/percussion surge; 'Jus Ad Bellum' a melancholy vocal reflection on war that turns to percussive instrumental churnings.

Oh's electric-led title track is labyrinthine and playful, and like 'The Imperative' and the wordless 'Phosphorus' (the latter a set highlight), dizzyingly rhythm-bending. Almazan is terrific throughout, and his partnership with Oh and Obed Calvaire rhythmically awesome, and Oh herself rockets through a constantly gripping motif-shifting long solo on the closing track, 'The Other Side'.