Trumpeter and composer jaimie branch once joked that she didn’t like to use the terms “free jazz” and “career” in the same sentence. Fair enough. But if anyone could bridge the experimentation of improvised music with the general accessibility of pop, she could. A product of the fertile, hybridised 2010s scene surrounding Chicago’s International Anthem record label (which also includes Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven and Angel Bat Dawid), branch’s music combined the fusion of post-Bitches Brew jazz with a sense of groove and melodic clarity that could make even her densest improvisations feel playful, touching on soul (“Love Song”), blues (“Prayer for Amerikkka, Pts. 1 & 2”), and Afro-Latin music (“Simple Silver Surfer”) along the way. The underlying feel in her music is joy: Just see if you can get through “Theme 002” without tapping along. Her sudden death in 2022 at the age of 39 foreclosed on a seriously promising creative life—a career, even. Here’s a celebration of what she left behind.