Charles Lloyd earned his stripes way back in 1950s Memphis playing horns in local R&B aggregations, back in the days of the blues-stoked bar-walkers and those frenzy-inspired, high-pitched squealers. He hit it big in the 1960s with the flower-power jazz of Forest Flower (one of jazz’s first million-selling albums) but then he dropped out, disappeared, totally vanished from the scene. When he returned in the late 1980s, with Fish Out of Water and Notes From Big Sur, he’d put it all together—the funk, the soul, the floating sense of rhythm, the pulse, the drive, the groove—and it all worked in a deeply felt, elegantly played union of harmony, improvisation, and scorching invention.

Now he’s doing this drum set-tabla thing that emerged from his recent duo collaborations with the late drummer Billy Higgins, itself an outgrowth of 9/11 and the need for continual reinvention.

The set list is improvised. Charles Lloyd and two master percussionists. Playing live. Improvising all the way. Jam bands, eat your hearts out. This is jazz, high-flying, soul-satisfying, musically virtuosic jazz, played the way it was meant to be, wild, wooly, and totally free. Of the 40 or so albums that Charles Lloyd has recorded in his half-century career, this one makes the top ten easy, maybe even the top five.