Joe Lovano's and Dave Liebman's regular partnerships flowered in the Saxophone Summit supergroup they shared from 1999 with the late Michael Brecker; they revisit it on this informal 2013 jam from Pennsylvania's Deer Head Inn, which engagingly mixes the pair's Coltrane allegiances with a freeboppish 1960s-Ornette rhythmic vivacity. The night was also a book launch for drummer and poet Michael Stephans' Experiencing Jazz: A Listener's Companion, and Stephans, bassist Tony Marino, and Lovano's vocalist wife Judi Silvano – often operating wordlessly like a third melody instrument – completed the quintet. Two originals each from the leaders join a serpentine, brisk-walking jam on the standard song ‘There Is No Greater Love’. Lovano's ‘Topsy Turvy’, a staccato horns-and- vocal hook sparked by a free collective-improv melee, accelerates to a swaggering tenor break from the composer and Liebman's shivery elisions and ingenious double-time on soprano, and Silvano's fearlessly adventurous, if occasionally strident top-end scat.

Liebman's ‘Day and Night’ shifts seamlessly between the saxophonists' free forays and reminders of the melody, Lovano's Blackwell's Message' (a tribute to Ornette Coleman drums legend Ed Blackwell) opens in a soft flute dialogue and an impetuous Silvano sprint into yodels, bird-twitters and exclamatory emphases, before a pumping bass and drums vamp sets both saxophonists loose at full cliche-free stretch on tenor. Liebman's closing ‘Get Me Back To The Apple’, the standout track, is an exhilarating two-tenor gallop, shifting from a free- contrapuntal tussle to muscular solos embracing raw atonalisms and quicksilver melodic runs over Marino's and Stephans' charging pulse. It's a rough and ready show, but it feels like a special evening for that night's Deer Head crowd.