The most telling creative hallmark of long or deep experience is often an instinct for what to leave out. The Magic of Now could be a PR's throwaway hook, but it's a title that fits this quartet set led by Philadelphia pianist Orrin Evans perfectly.

When he was invited to replace Ethan Iverson in internationally-feted trio The Bad Plus in 2018, DownBeat greeted Evans as a Rising Star – although he'd already been a local hero as a player, bandleader, mentor, and powerful community enabler in his home town for two decades. This session, with sometime Robert Glasper bassist Vicente Archer, John Scofield drummer Bill Stewart, and the exquisitely lyrical and understated young saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins (a stunning protege of Ambrose Akinmusire and Jason Moran) is all the stronger for vaulting so subtly and economically beyond its deceptively familiar antecedents in the 1950s Cool School, and Monk/Cedar Walton/Tyner piano postbop.

The steady backbeat and airily twisting alto melody of ‘Mynah’ could have built to a thrash, but Evans and Wilkins find intensity in it while barely raising their volume.

‘MAT-Matt’, an old Evans original for his sons, confirms how patiently the pianist can squeeze ostensibly disparate motifs together without disrupting his flow, and the freebop-to-swing ‘Momma Loves’ drives Wilkins from Lee Konitz' drifting lyricism to headlong Coltranesque flights toward the outer edge. Archer and Stewart are crucial to the ensemble identity of this fine collective achievement, but Orrin Evans' long-honed mastery and Immanuel Wilkins' new-minted one are its most awesome virtues.