Gary Bartz began his career by jamming with Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan and Pharoah Sanders, moved up a step in 1965 by joining Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and in 1970, joined the Miles Davis band, playing with the trumpeter at the Isle of Wight Festival (Jazzwise 254) and on Live/Evil. By 1972 Bartz was sufficiently established to be able to found his own successful band, NTU Troop, which he described as ‘an alliance of bop, free, rock and African music’. I am too young to have seen the group in action, but from all the recorded evidence I’ve heard, they were a fearsome prospect live, the saxophonist melding the searing open-ended funk improv of contemporary Miles with the cosmic swirl of Sun Ra and the spiritual yearning of the Coltranes, Sanders and Lateef.

This newly-released concert, recorded by West German radio at Bremen’s Post-Aula in 1975, preserves a musically-brilliant (if sadly short-lived) version of the Troop – drummer Howard King, bassist Curtis Robertson and pianist Charles Mims – playing eight lengthy extemporisations over the course of two hours; the centrepiece of which is a wonderful 25-minute take on that 1970s spiritual jazz touchstone, ‘I’ve Known Rivers’, based around a famous Langston Hughes poem.

Occasionally, the soloists lose focus, and the music becomes untenably dense, but the grooves are strong enough to maintain interest when the players wander down blind alleys. The sound is decent, capturing the energy of this powerful and pioneering band, although some listeners may find the very 1970s thick and ‘heavy bass-amp’ sound not to their taste. For readers who’ve discovered Bartz through his late-career flowering with young gun outfits like Maisha, this is an excellent opportunity to visit one of this remarkable musician’s earlier incarnations.