Bassist Charlie Haden has reassembled much of his acclaimed late-Sixties Liberation Music Orchestra – including Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Paul Motian – for The Ballad of the Fallen. Spun through the delicate web of Bley's riveting arrangements, the compositions breathe with the diverse sadness and beauty of life itself.

Alternately swinging, contemplative,...