Dan Rosenboom has never been one to play within the lines, and his new album Coordinates proves it. The trumpeter, composer, and producer has created a project that bends and stretches across genres, building on numerical patterns, cosmic imagery, and the collaborative spirit of his closest musical allies. Recorded over four years with 28 of Los Angeles’ top musicians from both the jazz scene and the Hollywood studio world, Coordinates unfolds as a concept album that shifts between progressive jazz, metal, symphonic textures, and chamber-like intimacy, yet always feels unified by Rosenboom’s singular vision.

The seed of the album came from a series of numbers that appeared in a favorite science fiction show. To Rosenboom, they became a kind of game board, a grid of time signatures that he transformed into the rhythmic frameworks for five major pieces. Each composition, he explains, became “a ritual dance from an unknown civilization, somewhere among the stars,” a way to chart coordinates of being through sound.

The result is an album that grooves with unexpected rhythms while weaving together lush orchestrations. Rosenboom tapped both longtime collaborators and new voices: guitarist Jake Vossler, bassist Jerry Watts Jr., and drummer Caleb Dolister co-produced, sculpting tones and ideas across multiple workshops. Vibraphone, marimba, and grand piano form the core alongside guitars and bass, while orchestral brass, strings from the Lyris Quartet, and appearances by heavyweights like harpist Jacqueline Kerrod, violinist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, saxophonist Nicole McCabe, and keyboardist Jeff Babko expand the palette.

Critics have long championed Rosenboom’s fearless pursuit of the unknown. Chris Barton of the Los Angeles Times praised him as “a musician dedicated to exploration and expression, regardless of anyone’s imagined boundaries,” while Glide Magazine positioned him alongside Kamasi Washington as one of the artists driving “a new pulsating jazz movement that all younger generations can relate and attach to.”