The cover of David Lasocki’s book A Higher Fusion: The New Orleans Modern-Jazz Group Astral Project at 34 shows the group as a quartet—saxophonist Tony Dagradi, guitarist Steve Masakowski, acoustic bassist Jim Singleton and drummer Johnny Vidacovich. A lot of people still think of the group as a quintet with pianist Dave Torkanowsky, but as Lasocki explains in his detailed history of the band, Tork left the band he co-founded after 23 years in 2001. Lasocki’s book isn’t just a history; it’s a detailed account of his own experiences listening to the band, particularly at Jazz Fest, which is one of the few places you’ll hear Astral Project play these days.

The group’s 2013 Jazz Fest set offered a nice postscript to the work. The band put on to play the kind of memorable performance that has made Astral Project one of the signature elements in the resurgence of New Orleans jazz since the 1980s. Its members, individually and collectively, have managed to honor the traditional underpinnings of the New Orleans musical legacy while resolutely exploring new ground.

The group is well worthy of the attentions of Lasocki, a classical music journalist who became obsessed with Astral Project after seeing a 2002 concert in Bloomington, Indiana. Lasocki has assembled a rigorously detailed history of the group in A Higher Fusion, poring over every track on every album and scores of live performances, which are recounted with the agonizing detail of an acolyte burning with regret at not having personally witnessed them. The book is an academic work—stylistically dry and packed with almost numbing detail—but it will prove to be an indispensable reference book that every serious student of New Orleans music history should read. In a perfect world all the great musicians would have a volume such as this documenting their artistic achievements.