NEW RELEASES : In Brief

* * * Yusef Lateef, “Plays Ballads,” YAL. The 10 selections here, all composed by Lateef, are not so much ballads as meditations: considered, contemplative expositions with such titles as “You Are Me,” “All Are One” and “Inscape.” Lateef’s tenor improvisations develop as incantations, with unobtrusive, sometimes droning contributions from bassist Avery Sharpe, pianist Tom McClung, percussionist Adam Rudolph and drummer Stephen McCraven, who creates the recording’s only perspiration-raising moments with his slap-happy brushwork on “Beneath the Sky.”

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).