This reissue recaptures a wonderful session for an all-star Kenny Wheeler-led 1983 quintet – wonderful not just for its typically Wheeler-esque illustrations of how to give patient accumulations of modest motifs a wealth of implications, or for the power of all the soloing, but for the borderline-psychic empathy of the leader and longtime friends and playing partners John Taylor and Dave Holland. There are just four pieces, with the opening ‘Foxy Trot’ running to 14 minutes and the closing ‘Three For D’Reen’ an almost 25-minute segue of themes winding up on Wheeler’s famous, shyly exultant modulation-game ‘Mark Time’. John Taylor opens ‘Foxy Trot’ in quiet, wide-spaced three-note figures, the dynamics of each one reflecting a signature Wheeler device in sounding like an echo of its predecessor. Brecker and Wheeler do the same together over the ensuing groove, which unleashes blistering trumpet and piano improv, and an intriguingly slippery rather than familiarly staccato solo from a Taylor-shadowed Brecker. Wheeler and Taylor hop and dance in free conversation on ‘Ma Bel’, ‘W.W’ is a call-and-response tune in which springy horn solos are constantly nudged and badgered by spontaneous piano harmonies – and ‘Three For D’Reen’ embraces a rapturous deep-tenor swirl coaxed by trumpet asides, a free-bop section with an onrushing, sometimes Haden-reminiscent bass feature for Dave Holland, and a flat-out Brecker eruption of banshee howls and dissonant bell-notes. The late Kenny Wheeler’s discreet muse can rarely have triggered such uninhibited interpretation.