A quartet formed by Pat Thomas on piano, Antonin Gerbal on drums, Joel Grip on double bass and Seymour Wright on alto saxophone. Their music takes the work of Ahmed Abdul-Malik as its point of departure — the New York-based double bassist, oud player, composer and thinker who brought jazz together with Arabic and East African traditions.

The group does not, however, treat his compositions as material for reconstruction. Instead, they extract rhythms, melodies and fragmentary ideas from them in order to create their own language of contemporary improvisation. Heavy repetitions, syncopation and a driving pulse develop into music that is at once complex and direct — made for listening, thinking and dancing.

Across albums such as New Jazz Imagination, Super Majnoon (East Meets West), Nights on Saturn (Communication) and Wood Blues, the quartet continually transforms Abdul-Malik’s legacy, creating intense, propulsive jazz in which technical precision leads to ecstatic physical energy. Melodies build, swell and disintegrate, while the music moves forward with an unrelenting swing.