He was presiding over the same quartet as on the album, with accomplished American musicians: the guitarist John Abercrombie, the bassist Drew Gress and the drummer Jack DeJohnette. Their rapport is a bustling thing, carried onward by a rolling boil of toms and cymbals, and it brings out Mr. Surman’s hardier energies.

The set began with an unaccompanied overture on baritone saxophone. Mr. Surman’s sound, full but focused, held a clear center of gravity before the band entered with “Hilltop Dancer,” one of the album’s more driving tunes. During a blues-haunted but harmonically restless guitar solo Mr. Surman brayed a low drone at the song’s tonal root, sustaining it through circular breathing. He divided his attentions between baritone and soprano through the rest of the set, switching before each song. (He had a commanding solo introduction on soprano too, preceding “Ogeda,” a roving waltz.)

There were some issues of balance in the band: Mr. DeJohnette, who has recorded often with Mr. Surman, overpowered the others with the force of his attack. (Mr. Abercrombie answered by turning up his volume in kind.) At times the sound got muddled, and a similar problem crept into the music. But this was the first set, and it progressively improved.

“Haywain,” a free improvisation on the slightest scrap of melody, came late in the going and cleared the slate. Mr. Surman dug in on baritone, working out a tangle of chromatic dissonances with hard, gutsy blowing. The rest of the band tumbled with him, loosening and constricting their hold on tempo. It was a full, all-hands commitment, with no one at the helm.