Saxophonist Fred Anderson is one of the great elder statesmen of improvised music. He has been playing, teaching, or sponsoring it for the last three-plus decades at his Chicago barroom, The Velvet Lounge. One of his great partners over the years has been his counterpart in New Orleans, the great Edward “Kidd” Jordan. Their tenor “battles” have reached the same heights as the more famous Dexter Gordon/Wardell Gray or Eddie Davis/Johnny Griffin recordings, but they happen now several times each year. This current record celebrates their collaboration in March 2009 on the occasion of Anderson’s 80th birthday and contains white hot jazz of the highest caliber.

Their high level of playing starts in the opening minutes of the first cut “21st Century Chase” and does not let up. Anderson and Jordan riff off each other at high speeds for several minutes with Kidd on the high end of the saxophone and Anderson in the lower registers. Many dismiss this kind of music and think that the players are just blowing without caring where it goes; Anderson and Jordan are listening to each other with intent and intensity, and the listener can hear the great, instantaneous music that results. Later in the piece, Anderson and Jordan take the music into the stratosphere playing swooping lines that sound like the spiritual displays with which Pharaoh Sanders and John Coltrane elevated audiences’ consciousnesses in the mid-1960s.

This recording continues this theme as Jordan and Anderson play off, on, about, and around each other and guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Harrison Bankhead, and drummer Chad Taylor. They come back to earth for the last tune “Song for Alvin Fielder,” but by the end they take it back to beautiful realms.