This is the first album as leader by Tineke Postma since 2014’s Sonic Halo, where she shared the frontline with Greg Osby, and follows a period in which she performed principally as a guest soloist. Becoming a mother played a significant role in Postma’s shift in approaches, and the experiences of motherhood avowedly has provided inspiration for the Dutch saxophonist’s new compositions here. Intensely human experiences are given an abstracted, mythologised twist in the writing and playing, however. As Postma explains: “The album Freya is a tribute to creation in all its facets. In Norse and Frisian mythology, Freya is a goddess of creation, love and fertility.”

Wayne Shorter is a pervasive influence, as are the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Geri Allen and Terri Lyne Carrington. And there’s nice album artwork by the Chicago-based artist Chad Kouri. A design consisting of intersecting and overlaid sinuous lines delivered in a rich but spare, pared-back, painterly palette, it looks the way the music sounds.