I’ve been spending a lot of time recently ruminating on the nature of traditional New Orleans jazz and the extremely subtle differences between the approaches taken by its continued practitioners. Early jazz pretty much grew along a trajectory set by its greatest improvisers, most notably Louis Armstrong, until World War II, when wartime rationing and a radio hiatus created a historical dead zone. When jazz came back into view after the war it had transformed into bop, which traveled along a trajectory blazed by Charlie Parker until John Coltrane, then Miles Davis, transformed it into a medium that embraced world music, the avant-garde, rock and funk. If there is to be a new Armstrong it will be a sequel, not a completely new script, and there will be no new Parker or Coltrane. Their influence is all encompassing and apparently not transcendable. There could be a new Miles Davis, i.e. a conceptualist deft at expanding his canvas to include all forms of popular music, but with popular music as diffused as it is today, any musician with Davis’ vision will probably be forced to work at the edges of popular culture. Unless, of course, he is also the director of an institution with as much money and aesthetic clout as Lincoln Center.

Which brings me to this lovely, well played record filled with good compositions performed at a high level of skill, energy and enthusiasm. It is well titled as The Next Generation, and it bears the kind of relationship to the work of New Orleans AFO Records-era bop masters Harold Batiste, James Black and Ellis Marsalis that organizations such Preservation Hall and the groups that play at Palm Court have to traditional New Orleans jazz. Much angst has been shed over whether young musicians like the players pianist Jesse McBride assembles here have the responsibility to perform music that moves beyond the teachings of their elders. I can only conclude that this is a red herring, that the responsibility of the player is to do the best he or she can with the job at hand. Some of the former “new generation” players brought from New Orleans by Wynton Marsalis to the world stage via the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra have gone on to epitomize the highest level of contemporary jazz improvisation, even if they are not usually blazing new trails. A resultant sloppy or insincere recording should be identified as such, but simply playing in a 50-year-old style isn’t enough reason to slam somebody. Maybe these reed players aren’t doing anything we haven’t heard before from Wayne Shorter or Eric Dolphy, but they’re playing their hearts out here and that should be what matters.

Most importantly, they are playing together at a high level, listening to each other and coming up with a collective feeling if not style they can call their own. A baseball player doesn’t have to hang his head just because he’s playing the same game Jackie Robinson played. Saxophonists Allen Dejan and Rex Gregory interact gloriously on James Black’s great composition “Comprehension,” and the grooves, pulses and strolls set by McBride, bassist David Pulphus and drummer Joe Dyson keep the action bubbling along nicely. With five distinctly fascinating Harold Batiste compositions in the mix, this is one post-bop album that doesn’t merely break down into series of pinwheeling solos.