Lee Konitz's search for fresh paths through the American songbook has been decidedly hit-and-miss on recent releases. This 2011 live recording, selected from a weeklong engagement at New York's Blue Note, finds him in inspired form, unpicking the standard repertoire like a man possessed. Best of all, his alto sax has retained its icy spike and deliberate hesitancy. The bridge of ‘Stella by Starlight’ has rarely sounded so acerbic, and even ‘Body and Soul’ is wracked with doubt.

Although the album is released under Lee Konitz's name, the group was booked as a leaderless collective, and the sense of organic growth is palpable from Konitz's opening flourish to Frisell's shimmering final bars. Each well-worn theme is cast anew as a free-flowing, richly-detailed dialogue that is loosely structured by the underlying harmonic sequences.

The set opens with Konitz coasting over Joey Baron's loose-limbed rolls, Frisell starts the ballad ‘I’ll Remember April' at his most oblique, and a resonant Gary Peacock bass launches ‘I Can’t get Started'. Scene set and melody stated, the quartet play with time, stretch into abstraction, interweave and intersect. Peacock and Baron are a terrific rhythm team, and Bill Frisell mixes his bendy sustains and unsettling resonance with precisely-voiced fretwork that recalls the great Jim Hall.