For their eagerly-awaited followup, Opus 5 draws an even tighter focus on PentaSonic. As Sipiagin explains, “The second CD is a stronger direction. It’s called PentaSonic because for some reason most of the tunes we brought in were in 5/4, and it was purely a coincidence. We didn’t talk to each other ahead of time about this, but I brought in two songs in 5/4 and Seamus brought one in that was 5/4, Donald brought a tune in 5/4 and Boris even brought in a 5/4 arrangement of Freddie Hubbard’s ‘Red Clay.’ It was like, ‘What’s going on here?’ But it just happened that way. So we were playing around with ideas for the title and came up with ‘penta’ for five, and it just seemed to fit.”

One tune not in 5/4 is the album’s rousing closer, an adaptation of Charlie Parker’s buoyantly swinging “Charlie’s Wig,” which Kikoski brought to the band. “It’s based on the standard ‘When I Grow Too Old To Dream,” he explains. “That’s actually an arrangement that I did for horns and rhythm section that we tried in the studio on the Birds of a Feather record with Roy Haynes, Dave Holland, Roy Hargrove and Kenny Garrett. And it sounded great but for some reason Roy didn’t want to use it. It’s a tune I always wanted to try, so I brought it out for this Opus 5 album. It’s an interesting arrangement because it features the rhythm section. The horns are sort of there, but not that much. They sneak in and out of the arrangement. Usually the horns play all the melody parts and the rhythm section just comps behind them. But here the bass plays the melody with the piano and the horns kind of sneak in near the end. It was one of the more fun tunes on the date. It’s not that involved, it was more like, ‘Let’s play some jazz.’ And I think we did that in one take.”

Edwards’ “The Sabateur,” a high-energy vehicle for potent solos by Kikoski, Sipiagin and Blake, kicks off the collection in exuberant fashion and is followed by Sipiagin’s “Videlles les Dreams,” which opens with an unaccompanied bass intro before segue-ing to a Rhodes-fueled romp that features the signature tight harmonies between trumpet and tenor. “Seamus and I play so nicely together,” says Sipiagin. “We kind of feel each other rhythmically and melodically and sound-wise too, so we can really match each other. It’s really like one instrument at some point.” Adds Blake, “It’s easy for me to blend with Alex’s sound. I know his style from playing with him for such a long time. So in that respect, it’s second nature.”

Blake’s dramatic “Sign of Life” has him switching to soprano sax and includes stellar solos by Sipiagin on flugelhorn and Kikoski on piano.

Edwards’ urgent “Ducktones” involves some intricate unisons on the head between trumpet and tenor sax (somewhat reminiscent of Randy Brecker’s “Some Skunk Funk”) over a pulsating funk groove. Both Sipiagin and Blake contribute bracing solos here and Edwards turns in a riveting drum solo at the tag of this crackling number. “At the time I wrote ‘Ducktones’ I was listening to a lot of electronica and drum ‘n’ bass music,” says Edwards. “I was just trying to experiment with different textures and wanted to do something that was atonal and tonal in the same tune, while at the same time giving everyone different episodes to improvise over. After developing my ideas, the piece just built up that way.”