Ralph Alessi has spent much of his career proving that a trumpet can whisper, roar, bend, and practically disappear into the architecture of a song. On A Sun That Never Sets, he gives his instrument even more room to roam, expanding his quartet into a five-piece that treats music as an invitation to explore without a map.

The trumpeter’s first quintet outing since his This Against That ensemble with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, captured on 2019’s acclaimed Imaginary Friends, the new album replaces the saxophone with a remarkable family addition: Alessi’s brother, trombonist Joseph Alessi. His muscular, agile lines bring a new dimension to the music, often locking horns with Ralph in exchanges that can shift from calm and contained to gloriously unruly in a heartbeat. Behind them, pianist Matt Mitchell, double bassist John Hébert, and drummer-vibraphonist Ches Smith form a remarkably intuitive rhythm section. They’re the kind of players who can navigate Alessi’s syncopated themes with the loose-limbed confidence of musicians who know exactly how far they can push an idea before letting it snap into something unexpected.

That push and pull is central to A Sun That Never Sets. Alessi moves easily between patient, contemplative passages and angular structures charged with heavy blowing, giving the album a sense of restlessness even when the music seems to be standing still. There’s room for melody, abstraction, silence, and sudden bursts of velocity, with each musician finding moments to step forward without breaking the larger design.

Mitchell is particularly slippery, tracing Alessi’s themes while wandering deliberately beyond their harmonic boundaries. His piano seems to orbit the horns rather than simply accompany them, while Smith and Hébert keep the rhythmic foundation in constant flux. The result is jazz that feels simultaneously precise and alive, composed down to the smallest detail yet never trapped by the notes written on the page. And then there’s Alessi’s trumpet, the album’s unmistakable center of gravity, with a tone capable of conveying an extraordinary range of moods. Here, that sound can be lyrical one moment and wildly abstract the next. Alessi has assembled a band capable of following him anywhere, and they make the journey feel like the point.