To judge by this live outing, it must be fun to be in Loz Speyer’s band. It’s the third time the trumpeter has released an album from his improvisatory Inner Space project and he’s the only player on all three. The latest line-up is yet another all-star affair, with hot shot sax players Dee Byrne and Xhosa Cole alongside long-standing names from the free-er end of jazz: bass man Larry Bartley and drummer Gary Willcox. It’s a fertile combination of creative talents that benefits greatly from Speyer’s particular compositional approach, using well-deployed written elements to throw out an atmosphere that opens a door for each player to find their own path.

The energetic chemistry that emerges on this album is often breathtakingly sure-footed - were they really making this up? It’s a gloriously unified collaboration that occasionally gives one player their space - as in ‘Chimes For Grimes’, a tribute to the late Henry that Bartley begins with a rich stream of consciousness on bass that underpins the later sweeping horn chorales. Willcox is inspired throughout, finding and steering the mood and dynamics through an adroit blend of rhythm and surprise, while the two saxophonists converse, quibble and swoon together.

Speyer’s trumpet sparkles every time he takes his turn, notably in the Cuban-flavoured solo that closes off ‘Innate Ornette’ - another apt tribute. Freedom, in any context, should exult and this free-spirited music certainly does - even the more elegiac (and timely) ‘I Weep For Your People as for Mine’ is strangely affirmative, as if they just can’t help themselves. And, happily, it’s catching - which is worth more than a bonus track any day.