Chris Potter is a towering figure in the world of modern-day sax-jazz. But he’s also an original composer of strong themes that are harmonically challenging yet easily digestible. No more so than on Potter’s new release, Eagle’s Point, a follow-on from previous studio album Sunrise Reprise, released in 2021. The latter was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic and perhaps in consequence had a hunger, a cathartic energy about it, his Circuits trio embracing a broad contemporary jazz soundworld.

The new recording, his fifth issued by the UK jazz label Edition, sees Potter return to the classic acoustic jazz quartet setting, with support from a new line-up of equivalent A-list jazz musicians, all of which need no introduction: John Patitucci and Brian Blade (ie. the rhythm section from Wayne Shorter’s supernatural post-noughties quartet), and the exceptional pianist Brad Mehldau.

Potter injects a mix of both tough and tender aspects of his primary influences Rollins and Trane, and Patitucci and Mehldau are at the height of their storytelling powers soloing on ‘Cloud Message’, a sensuous swinger that fizzes with Patitucci and Blade’s driving yet feathery swing. Potter is less sinewy, more purely lyrical on bass clarinet introducing the bossa-tinged sweetener ‘Indigo Ildiko’ before rounding off robustly in more intensely felt Trane-like fashion on tenor. Among other highlights are the elegant, flamenco-infused ‘Malaga Moon’ which features an exquisite contribution from Mehldau, and a Joe Henderson-informed snappy latin-funk track ‘Horizon Dance’ that concludes a classy, well-balanced set of originals. For this most unassuming of supergroups, it’s never about anything else other than the music.