You wouldn�t want to leave a remonstrating message on John Escreet�s answerphone, unless you wanted it to be turned into part of his band�s repertoire

Star rating ****
You wouldn't want to leave a remonstrating message on John Escreet's answerphone, unless you wanted it to be turned into part of his band's repertoire. That's what happened to one disgruntled colleague, whose diatribe introduces the New York-based pianist's Suite of Consequences and gets both electronically treated and taken up by the musicians in a continuing thread.

In one way this is evidence of a jazz group effectively embracing contemporary culture and technology. Yet, in another, it reflected the awareness of jazz tradition that informs Escreet's music. There was something Charles Mingus-like about the way drummer Tyshawn Sorey kept up his disdainful quote from the answerphone message, and the music moves very naturally between freely improvised passages and smartly composed groove and horn figures, with the musicians negotiating varied mood swings and spontaneous detours with absolute assurance and scary mobility.

Their individual strengths are considerable and there is plenty of genuinely creative, purposeful and soul-stirring soloing, especially from trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and alto saxophonist Dave Binney. But it is their brilliantly flowing interaction, with Escreet variously New York tough, hyperactive and quietly experimental and Sorey by turns brushing with near silent concentration and finding musical possibilities in even a burst drum head, that makes this band one to cherish.