Kris Davis, 39, has spent years as her generation’s powerhouse pianist in waiting. No longer. On “Diatom Ribbons,” her skills as a composer, band assembler, system builder and improviser — a musical auteur, basically — come fully into focus. Ms. Davis builds her compositions on crooked patterns and splintered loops that somehow become a kind of magnetic touchstone, bringing together wildly diverse musicians in tangled unity.

Since the mid-1990s, this 11-piece band has been the testing ground for Guillermo Klein’s tumbling, tango-influenced composition style — basically unbeholden to broader trends in pop, classical or jazz — and “Cristal” is among Los Guachos’ best efforts. Mr. Klein rarely spends time on music that wasn’t written by himself or a bandmate, but here he devotes three tracks to the repertoire of Carlos Gardel, an early-20th-century tango star, demonstrating how to pay homage without disappearing into the material.