“Trials of the Argo,” the multitracked title piece from Ned Rothenberg’s 1981 debut, is a wine-dark, side-long voyage and depth gauge for flutes, bass clarinet, ocarina, and shakuhachi, the demanding Japanese bamboo flute then relatively new to Rothenberg, who rose to some prominence alongside contemporaries such as John Zorn. All the sounds on “Argo” are acoustic, but they can seem to spring not only from Rothenberg’s quiver of instruments and the trials and treacheries faced by the Argonauts but from flying Atari saucers and their gargling overlords, from industrial vacuum cleaners throbbing in procession. I also hear dolphins in love and distress overlapping with the tearfall of wood-nymphs. That great piece notably excepted, Rothenberg’s solo recordings are as a rule made without overdubs but tend to be layered and dialogic all the same. Through circular breathing and multiphonics, Rothenberg will often sustain two or more simultaneous lines and squiggles. On “Dance Above,” a clarinet improvisation from the new Looms & Legends, bass figures roil under purring longer lines, importuning whistles, worrisome creaks. On that same piece and many others—“Odd Not Odd” from 2012’s World of Odd Harmonics, is another—Rothenberg will toggle between compact, widespread ideas as if playing back taped interspecies interviews with the pauses tightly razored out.

Odd Harmonics was Rothenberg’s last solo recital, that one strictly for soprano and bass clarinets. The new album, made up mostly of pieces for clarinet (B-flat and A) and alto saxophone, was recorded in two sessions: one in December of last year, the other a few days after Trump’s second inauguration. The album is offered, Rothenberg writes in his brief liner notes, as an “aural refuge for mind and body.” There’s serenity in much of the music, and as a model of and boon to concentration, it might be an antidote to the present’s degraded, ugly, and often exhaustingly stupid discourse. But it’s fretful and remonstrative music, too, recalling the fire escape as saxophone woodshed and the burning building, too. On each of his instruments, Rothenberg uses extended techniques and favors manifold tone. His clarinet sound is both woody and splintery, beautiful and burry, and in his elastic altissimo range he’s not afraid of blue-jay screams or shrilly interrogation lamps. Associations and inspirations include sounds of the natural world, as I’ve already suggested, and famous alto breaks (so, birdsong and Bird song), along with his highly individualized engagement with African, Japanese, and other music from around the world. The pieces aren’t routinely scalar, but he will blow searing jazz lines or linger in a familiar realm, as when he works what sounds to me like harmonic-minor language on the lovely last few minutes of “Plun Jah.” Joining the album’s dozen improvised titles are two pre-composed ones: Rothenberg’s mournfully dignified “Resistance Anthem” for alto, and a centered rendition of “’Round Midnight” played on shakuhachi. If midnight in this context is some point of no return, maybe both hands haven’t reached twelve, but to paraphrase Mose Allison and Bob Dylan, they’re gettin’ there. Is Harold Lloyd available?