The veteran bassist-bandleader William Parker has reached the point in his career where he stands like a tall tree around which wrap many branches of black music history.

As this enjoyable, 2-CD set shows, he keeps growing his own ideas from the roots he knows only too well. Universal Tonality is a strikingly varied offering, moving from towering orchestral sound to intimate spoken word recitals and all points in between, and if it is accurate to describe Parker as a modern day avant-garde titan he is particularly effective when broadening the non-western pathways opened up by such as Trane, Pharoah and Don Cherry, as if he was intent on putting more Africa into Africa Brass. In fact, the range of elements in what is a 17-piece supergroup enables Parker to create mesmeric nuance as the songs reach explosive peaks.

The buzz and hiss of Roger Blank's balafong in the midst of the swells of brass bring an entrancing lightness to the freewheeling density of the horns and reeds, and blends effectively with a string section that features the late, great Billy Bang. Yet it is the compelling Leena Conquest, a vastly underrated figure in the pantheon of jazz vocal, who in many ways emerges as the kind of centrifugal force of the recording because she has the tonal strength to hold her own in the ensemble and commands attention while soloing. When she calls out America as ‘a stolen land inhabited by murderers and politicians’ she delivers the stark, unfiltered truth that is also part of the concept of universal tonality, in which players breathe and sing as one.