Chris Potter is one of the very few contemporary heavyweights in the big US tenor tradition. As a sax sideman he's been first choice for the bands of Dave Holland, Dave Douglas, the recently departed Paul Motian and of late for both McCoy Tyner and Pat Metheny. In spite of this superlative record, he hasn't always been able to stir an audience's imagination from the point of view of bandleader-composer as much as he has on his horn. But on The Sirens, which is his debut for ECM, Potter is certainly going some way to putting that right. The Sirens is arguably Potter's boldest, most persuasive recording as a leader to date. Most titles are references from Homer's ancient poem The Odyssey, an inspiration for his writing on the album. Potter is on sizzling form throughout, opening on ‘Wine Dark Sea’ with a post-Brecker epic funk theme, but solos with an unexpected sense of rhythmic phrasing and articulation that recalls the great Joe Henderson. The exciting young Cuban pianist David Virelles, who was superb in action in Potter's band at Ronnie's last year, has a quirkier yet highly effective cameo role here on celeste, prepared piano and harmonium. Virelles picks up a dialogue with Craig Taborn, whose brilliantly elusive piano solos sustain their inventiveness whether dedicated to Potter's lyrical brand of post-bop or in the kind of abstract settings that might feel closer to his own work – of which Taborn's stark minimalist solo piano ‘The Shades’ is the album's epilogue. It's Potter's growth as a leader and his breadth of vision that comes to the fore in the second half: while ‘Kalypso’ might highlight his debt to Sonny Rollins, the rapturous soprano sax-led ballad ‘Penelope’ and the title track, with Larry Grenadier's arco bass and Potter's bass clarinet's ascetic, pure tone, brings things far closer to the kind of yearning European jazz soundscapes we are more likely to hear on a ECM album by John Surman.