Chris Potter has been the tenor saxophonist other saxophonists study for three decades now. He came up at 18 with Red Rodney, logged formative years with Paul Motian and Dave Holland, toured in Pat Metheny’s quartet, and has built a leader discography of more than 20 albums spanning ECM, Edition, and his own recent live documents from the Village Vanguard. His playing joins ferocious harmonic command to genuine songfulness; DownBeat has called him one of the most studied and copied saxophonists alive.

This quartet surrounds him with three of the strongest individual voices in modern jazz. Pianist Craig Taborn, Potter’s collaborator going back to his Underground band and numerous other projects, brings an unmistakable sound world of his own, equally at home in groove and abstraction. Bassist Joe Martin, who anchored Potter’s ECM quartet on GRAMMY-nominated “The Dreamer Is the Dream,” is among New York’s most in-demand foundational players. Drummer Kendrick Scott, a Blue Note leader and Potter’s colleague in the current SFJAZZ Collective, plays with a composer’s ear for shape and dynamics.