Line-ups don't come much more star-studded than this one, but it remains a fact that such endeavours in jazz often fail to live up to expectation, such as the Giants of Jazz tour of 1970-71 with Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk, Al McKibbon and Art Blakey (and they don't come much more star-studded than that). Muthspiel has chosen well for this album, his second on the ECM and follow-up to the acclaimed Driftwood of 2014 with just Grenadier and Blade, with musicians prepared to surrender their egos to the cause of collective music-making. The compositions have both form and theme, but the idea is that these are flexible structures, and should the improviser depart from them, the accompanists follow in support of the creative moment. This is a bit like time, no changes within a flexible form, and it produces an exceptionally high level of creativity, both in the hands of the improviser and his accompanists. Muthspiel has come up with a series of eloquent vehicles to stimulate the improvisatory process, producing an album of subtly-shifting contrasts and exemplary group interaction that allows focused yet subtly-nuanced improvisation to blossom.