Last October, acting on a whim, the saxophonist Joe Lovano showed up uninvited at the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s show at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Peekskill. Horn in hand, he came ready to play — and play he did, adding an unexpected and welcome note to the evening.

“Joe is much more spontaneous” than most musicians, said John Patitucci, a bassist from Westchester, minutes before taking the stage at Birdland, in Manhattan, where he joined Mr. Lovano’s quartet this month for the final night of a five-night engagement. That show, featuring bop to ballads, brought the packed house down.

Having seen the quartet perform earlier in the week, Gunther Schuller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and arranger, praised Mr. Lovano for his continuing spontaneity, inventiveness and imagination. “I don’t know of anyone who combines those three things at such a high level so consistently,” he said.  Full Article…