EVEN BEFORE the final curtain came down on Miles Dewey Davis in 1991 the tribute albums had begun to appear, some weighty, some whimsical (Billy Jenkins’s Scratches of Spain is still a favourite). Few have been quite so reverential as Kind of New (Candid) by the New Orleans-born saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr.

Described as a 21st-century take on Davis’s classic Kind of Blue, in fact these eight pieces sometimes sound uncannily like outtakes from the 1959 sessions. The sextet revisits the original tunes with subtle reshapings and adds three more in similar vein. With its warm piano tones and cool, cool trumpet, this is a Kind of Blue of a parallel universe. The man (boy) with the horn is Christian Scott, remarkably only 17 when the record was made. On paper, the project may sound more like pastiche than homage, but your ears will tell you different.

A fog-delayed, truncated show by Chris Potter at the London Jazz Festival may not have been the ideal showcase for a saxophonist and band leader touted as a new Michael Brecker. The album he came to promote, Traveling Mercies (Verve), is however, impressive. Potter is still best known to the wider world as the soloist who eloquently wrapped up the last Steely Dan album, Two Against Nature, but here he sets out his stall as an imaginative composer. The fare ranges from the choppy, hard-driving opener, Megalopolis, which pits Potter’s edgy lines against John Scofield, a guitarist always worth his session fee, to the dreamy ruminations of Any Moment Now.

Ultimately Traveling Mercies may lack the killer themes to lift it from being a good, well-played jazz album into greatness, but you’ll still find plenty to enjoy.

There’s further fiery playing from the London saxman-about-town Julian Siegel, who gets his first outing as leader on Close-Up (Sound). For some years he has co-led the impressively combustible Partisans (isn’t another album due?) but here he runs the post-bop show. Siegel is an original soloist whose lines spin out in engagingly unpredictable directions. With his quartet propelled by the energetic drums of Gary Husband, this is a strong debut and his writing marks Siegel out as a cut above the legions of aspiring sax heavyweights.