fixture on New York City's downtown jazz scene throughout the 1980s and beyond, cellist Hank Roberts shares with his downtown contemporaries a tendency toward postmodern genre-blending and a resistance to being categorized. On GREEN, Roberts waves the avant-garde jazz torch, offering up 13 improvisation-based compositions that incorporate elements of blues, folk, world music, and contemporary classical.

Roberts has often favored trio settings, and guitarist Marc Durcet and drummer Jim Black help the cellist create complex structures that rely on space and sympathetic interplay, all the while drawing on an encyclopedic command of diverse styles. The music is challenging yet rarely confrontational, making for an always interesting, often lovely listening experience.