Rightly lauded for his 1969 LP The Black Ark, alto saxophonist Noah Howard is an integral but somewhat unheralded figure of the ‘New Music’. Like some of the key alto men of that school, notably Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and Arthur Blythe, Howard had a pleasingly heavy, punchy tone that worked well with the largely spare, spacious nature of his phrasing, occasionally boiling into a raucousness that spoke of gutsy post-war R&B. These two live sessions from Berlin’s Quartier Latin that were previously issued by FMP are fascinating documents insofar as they show Howard to good advantage in two distinct settings. Schizophrenic Blues is a quartet album in which his Ornette-Cherry chemistry with trumpeter Itaru Oki is excellent, and as the title suggests there is a stark malleability of form that leads to pleasingly loose applications of swing, shuffle and West Indian rhythms while the leader’s imagination comes into its own on a cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Bird of Beauty’, which is like a charming, offbeat calypso. In fact, the cultural breadth of Howard’s music is heard on the wonderful ‘Creole Girl’, a piece marked by vivid Arabic as well as Afro-Latin grooves that are rousingly energetic.

The Berlin Concert reinforces that impression as Howard’s strong soloing is heard to good effect in a quintet in which pianist Takeshi Kako stands out for his tasteful comping, and percussionist Lamont Hampton is impactful on pieces such as ‘Mardi Gras’, a lively song that cements festive and ritualistic links between New Orleans and the Caribbean. There has been a steadily growing appreciation of Howard’s work in the past decade or so, and demand for his original recordings is high. These two important releases should add to the clamour.