Jon Gold’s new single, "Lullaby for a Dream," is an act of gorgeous disorientation. You see the name—a pianist rooted in the intricate soils of jazz—and you prepare for one thing, but what arrives is a mist-laden skiff drifting from an entirely different shore. Gold, a Delaware musician, has composed a piece of British-Gaelic folk, and the cognitive dissonance is half the immediate magic....

For a man who has authored over 300 compositions, the French guitarist Arnito somehow still sounds entirely untethered on his latest release, "Musiques de mon monde, vol.4". When a musician hits their twenty-seventh album, you usually expect them to settle gracefully into a predictable chair. Arnito, alternatively, rips up the floorboards. The guitar-driven record acts as an intensely felt invitation to explore a map...