As the US emerged from lockdown, the American trumpeter Terence Blanchard fine-tuned the music he was composing for Spike Lee’s upcoming HBO documentary NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021½, the latest of Blanchard’s 40-odd film/TV scores. His opera Fire Shut Up In My Bones opened the current season of New York’s Met, the first opera by a black composer to be featured in the opera house’s 136-year history.

Now he releases Absence, a dazzling homage to saxophonist Wayne Shorter that combines the interactive flow of the E Collective band he formed in 2016 with the finesse of the Turtle Island String Quartet. Merging his grasp of composition with the small-group skills he honed with Art Blakey, the album captures Shorter’s freewheeling spirit, dramatic narratives and oblique harmonies in full.

Five of the tracks reimagine Shorter compositions. ‘The Elders’ from the 1971 Weather Report album Mr Gone, ebbs and flows from edgy modernist strings to fiery Blanchard trumpet and the E Collective work wonders with the languorous melody of ‘Fall’. The chirpy ‘When it was Now’ and ‘Diana’, a beautifully controlled ballad, are both dialogues between band and strings.

But this is much more than a radical reimagining of Shorter’s work. Blanchard’s ‘I Dare You’ is a trumpet showcase with a Shorteresque narrative, but the album opens with bassist David Ginyard’s ‘Absence’ a venomous slow burn. And the shapeshifting narratives continue with original work from guitarist Charles Atura and Davis Balakrishnan, the artistic director of the Turtle Island strings.

An impressive, densely-textured album, with headlong improvisations spiced by dramatic juxtapositions of electric band and strings.