Allen’s mature sax sound is characterized by idiosyncrasy and charm. John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter are obvious influences, but Allen builds upon each icon’s recognized elegance by using clever accents culled from throughout the jazz diaspora and making seductive use of space. The melody for “Hajile,” for instance, is stated in a buttery tone toughened up by avant-garde maverick Albert Ayler’s hymnlike straightforwardness, while “id” and “Louisada” (the latter a conflation of Loisaida and Louis 649, the bar near Avenue C that was Allen’s Saturday-night workshop) find him riding excellent drummer Rudy Royston’s catalog of rhythms with the fluidity of Joe Henderson. (Gregg August is on bass.) Allen credits another saxist with showing him that it was possible to bring all of jazz’s identities together. “I got a chance to see John Gilmore with the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1988, when I was a teenager,” he remembers. “[Sax star] James Carter took me; we both went to Northwestern High School. I followed him in the sax chair in the school band. So we get there and Gilmore is killin’ it on ‘Body and Soul.’ First, he interpreted it really old-school, like Coleman Hawkins might have, but with his own sound. Then he did the ’60s avant vibe, and then he took it way into outer space—it was a Sun Ra gig, after all. The whole time, though, he kept the form of the tune. That’s where I realized that all these branches come from the same tree.”

Recently, Allen revisited music he might have heard Gilmore play, fronting a two-sax quartet downtown at the Living Theatre with rising alto star Matana Roberts. The result was woollier, but no less engaging, than the original tunes on his album. Allen is at his linear best with a driving rhythm section, so the way in which Roberts’s rugged blues cries blended with Royston’s off-kilter interplay of mallets and brushes clearly challenged Allen just as Carter, his onetime mentor, must have done in the late ’80s. “Initially, JD had the vocabulary of so-called avant-garde techniques—the squeaks and what have you,” says Carter. “But they weren’t placed with what I’d call informed conviction. That came later.” Thinking back on the Living Theatre show, Allen spoke as if he’d found a new direction. “I don’t normally play without a specific set of parameters in mind,” he says. “But the idea here was to take small phrases and get as far out as we could. My trio feels so solid now that it’s time to shake things up again.”

I Am I Am comes out Apr 22 on Sunnyside Records. JD Allen Trio plays Jazz Standard Apr 7, 2008.