The older he gets – and your reviewer is now in his 90th year – the more he worries about what the future holds for the music he loves. Because so much of what is being played and recorded today has, for my ears, so little to do with jazz per se. Of course, the music will continue to go into many different directions. But there's one non-mainstream musician, in whom I have the greatest faith, who may well continually turn our music on its head but who will always come back to its basics… alto saxophonist/composer/producer David Binney, now in his early fifties. And he's just released what could arguably be his best-ever album, his ninth for Criss Cross Jazz. It's a quartet date with the rhythm section he uses for his weekly gigs at the 55 Bar in Greenwich Village. Solid and swinging as the solos are, what makes this record so exceptional are the compositions which are extremely difficult, even by Binney standards. On ‘Walk’, for instance, “we never go back to anything that happened before,” he says. “A few things, loops for solos and so on, but once they're done, it moves on to something else”. There are so many challenging tunes on this CD – like ‘Strange Animal’, ‘The Reason to Return’, ‘Time Takes Its Time’ and ‘Where Worlds Collide’ – all with different arranging concepts, some with changes, some without. Binney's slightly soured tone makes me mischievously wonder how he would have sounded if he had played with the late Jackie McLean! But Binney is his own man and a major talent. This is a brilliant and highly original record. Please get it and give him five stars for the future. P.S. Talking of ages, the producer here, Gerry Teekens, is 81!