This November's EFG London Jazz Festival reunion of saxophone star Joshua Redman's quartet featuring three of the classiest sidekicks in classic-to-contemporary jazz was unsurprisingly sold out at the Barbican by August.

Anyone with half an ear tuned to how those four virtuosi have played – separately, and fleetingly together – since they became a band in 1994, will know why. Long Gone is the latest chapter in their very occasional story, this time with all six tracks being composed by Redman himself. The tunes present an intriguing (even perplexing) contrast - being a selection of five elegant pieces mostly sprung off classic standard-song designs, plus one closing, hookily cryptic 12-minute take from a live show that reveals the power they unleash when the tunes barely matter and the gloves are off. The opening title track is a warmly languid glide on a rapturous classic-tenor, tweaked by the odd standard-song quote; the darting soprano feature ‘Disco Ears’ sets Redman and Mehldau off on glittering fast improvisations. The tenor rapture ‘Statuesque’ beautifully buoys up the quiver of Redman's long tones, and ‘Ship to Shore’, a slyly rocking slow groove, is developed in bluesy twists and asides by all the band.

But it's the closing 12-minute live take, ‘Rejoice’, that steals the show in its cryptically telling tenor blurts, hustling Mehldau-shadowed countermelodies, one-touch call-and-response and hurtling time-playing. As if all four were tuned into Sonny Rollins' mindset in his prime, it almost feels like the tunes are incidentals to this one-off band's dynamism.