While pursuing his path as an uncompromisingly original composer, Anthony Braxton has regularly visited ‘the tradition’ during his long career. The multi-reedist's love of anybody from Miles and Trane to Brubeck and Jobim has led him to cover anthems as well known to mainstream congregations as Braxton's own pieces aren't outside of his own faithful. Yet here is a fact worth contemplating.

The physical copies of the 13-CD box set of this latest instalment of standards have already sold out, and although it is a limited edition, that rapid turnover says something about the enduring interest in this strand of Braxton's output, or, perhaps more importantly, that this is his best work in quite some time.

Above all, Standards 2020 is a transatlantic triumph because the British band the American leads is a brilliantly responsive and independently minded unit, with a chemistry forged over many years. Pianist Hawkins, bassist Charles and drummer Davis bring forth all the attention to detail and pinpoint accuracy one would expect from a trio that knows that a worthwhile quartet is not a soloist plus three backing musicians. The big question is balance. Time and again on these pre-lockdown live gigs in Europe there is a push and pull with either rhythm or texture that brings individuality into play without disrupting that sacred sense of common cause, of shared hearing, playing and thinking. The highpoint in this respect is the take on Monk's ‘Evidence’ which breaks the already broken melody into blips and jolts that scatter into ever more teasing single notes and glancing riffs to create a kind of percussive pinball, where staccato shifts of direction have as much humour as gravitas. The hardness of the timbres, with Braxton's alto saxophone growling like a wildcat, is all the more impactful because of the ‘now freeze now fly’ character of the performance.

Among the 67 pieces on offer, which include classics by Ellington, Mingus and Rollins among others, there are many displays of such reflexive and dynamic skill. But the masterstroke is the way the sets are broadened out to place American pop within the context of jazz, so that Paul Simon is presented as a proper songwriting genius alongside the aforesaid innovators.

That is the ultimate achievement of this dazzling rainbow of music. Braxton and his band, which could not be more different to the great 2003 quartet (with ace guitarist Kevin O'Neil), show the thread of expression binding the Simons and Monks of this world is an understanding of the triumphs and travails of the human condition, from sunlit hope to the somber despair.

It can be captured in a flighty rhythm or weary melody, and these raw materials produce jewels of sound in the hands of a visionary such as Braxton, a man willing to hear what others don't when he lends an ear to what has been heard many times before. There is a lot to listen to here, and much to enjoy.