The forty-something Roman guitarist Luca Nostra, who contributed five years to the leading Italian New Music Parco della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble (PMCE), spends a lot of playing time in New York these days. It’s where he’s assembled the top-notch quintet on a new release Are You OK?. They weigh in here with contemporary electric jazz of some grit and muscle as well as melodic intent. For his part, the leader keeps things succinct and song-like in his arrangements of compositions informed by the riffy materials of post-rock, polyrhythms of African music and cross-rhythms of minimalism. There are other inspirational forces at work too with a nod to Return to Forever on ‘My Dear Fears’ though to the guitarist’s Kurt Rosenwinkel-ish ‘Trematoda’. But Nostra’s ace is his superb sideman: the Englishman in New York keyboardist John Escreet demonstrates his flexibility with a more rootsy groove-jazz Rhodes sound than we are used to hearing on his recordings as leader, the superb drummer Tyshawn Sorey and sinewy expressive tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin (who played on Nostra’s 2007 quartet album Ulrich and is a standout soloist from the Maria Schneider Orchestra), especially the latter, are all on scintillating form.