The music is full of tussles and wrestling matches, it veers off into tangents and sometimes threatens to crash. But with muscular mastery, the quintet always manages to exert the right amount of control. Vandermark 5 offers the audience the thrill of speed, the singular sensuality of the saxophone and the frenzied anxiety of the contemporary cello. Abrupt spaces surprise and barely audible sounds erupt into breaking walls of sound.

Despite the above, this is not esoteric music exclusively for hard-core jazzers. The music does rest on underlying compositions, shares some sensibilities with contemporary classical music and can get downright funky. It does not rely on the obvious pattern of head or melody followed by soloist after soloist. Most of the time when one instrument pulls out front, the rest stay in with rhythm, counter-rhythm, complementary or contrasting themes somehow fitting together while going off in different directions.

Frank Zappa said, “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny”. I say Ken Vandermark and the Quintet prove that Jazz is vital and can smell fresh.