“This week,” reported the New York Times in December 2009, “Birdland has booked an ad hoc quartet with three eminences and a great younger player. (…) It’s going to be a week of soft anarchy, a gig without preparation or rehearsal, despite the presence of recording microphones for a couple of evenings. The jazz musician’s trust in the present moment is elevated nearly to worship among this group’s elders, all of whom, one way or another, were in on the early stages of loosening up rhythm and structure in jazz.”

On this live recording from New York’s legendary club, an ensemble of history-making players dives into the music without a set list. Four exceptional jazz musicians – Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian – approach the standards from new perspectives and unusual angles. They play them with freedom, tenderness and a melodic and rhythmic understanding found only amongst jazz’s greatest improvisers.

The recording was made at Birdland and mixed by Manfred Eicher and the quartet, with James Farber as engineer, at New York’s Avatar Studios. Songs selected by this team from the performances of December 9 and 10, 2009, are: “Lover Man”, “Lullaby Of Birdland”, “Solar”, “I Fall In Love Too Easily”, “You Stepped Out Of A Dream” and “Oleo”. Konitz has often said that he tries to play the material as if encountering it for the first time. With all four musicians listening intently, discoveries are continually made in the music.

When these musicians play the standards, they do indeed make them new.