David Holland Quartet, ‘Conference of the Birds’ (1973)

What a group the bassist David Holland convened for an album named after a Persian Sufi classic. Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton, on flutes and reed instruments, were structural innovators and freethinkers, deciding how wide-open improvisation could conjure stories. Mr. Holland and the drummer Barry Altschul knew how to steer them or set them loose, with no chordal instrument to hold them in. Thoughtfully and playfully, the diverse voices sing. J.P.

Paul Bley, ‘Open, to Love’ (1973)

The tempos stay slow, the voicings sparse and the tension almost unbearable on “Open, to Love.” All solo albums have to reckon with solitude, and the pianist Paul Bley welcomes it, darkly and stoically, with music that floats alone, making listeners wait for every tense, unresolved, beautiful chord. J.P.

Keith Jarrett, ‘The Köln Concert’ (1975)

The best-selling solo piano album of all time, “The Köln Concert” was recorded live, on an unresonant baby grand that had been rolled onstage in error. But Keith Jarrett adapts, espousing a personal brand of barrelhouse folk-pop pianism that pulls together the warmth of Appalachian music, the insistence of rock and the stubborn intellectualism of free improvisation. G.R.

Pat Metheny, ‘Bright Size Life’ (1976)

Pat Metheny’s astonishingly self-assured debut helped forge a template for modern jazz guitar. His unorthodox, open chord gestures seem to melt into each other, while his lucid melodic runs are imbued with warmth by the young bassist Jaco Pastorius. The free-flowing pair sometimes seems to move as one 10-string instrument, especially on “Unquity Road,” which breathes with the hushed serenity of a Missouri summer night. ANDREW R. CHOW

Steve Reich, ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ (1978)

Something repeats and something else changes throughout this pinnacle of 1970s Minimalism. Steve Reich applied the precision of chamber music and a fascination with the beauty and perceptual effects of phase patterns to the plinking, percussive music from Ghana and Bali that he had studied. He devised a cross-cultural marvel, simultaneously meditative and hyperactive. J.P.