Individually, David Murray, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett represent the peak of achievement on their respective horns. When these four join forces as the World Saxophone Quartet, however, they transcend such limited notions as "saxophone section" and "soloist." Revue is American chamber music of stunningly orchestral dimensions, and it narrows the gap between "pop" and "art" music through the sheer jubilation and authority of the band's roots.

From Hemphill's title suite to the solo showcases on side two, Revue sounds like a procession of dancers, preachers, comics, showgirls, acrobats, mimes and sad-faced clowns. It is the blues as Dionysian, house-rocking celebration, elegant reflection and heroic regret. In the process of creating this musical time capsule, the Quartet has upped the ante for all writers and improvisers in the medium. Their rousing sense of collective textures brilliantly extends Duke Ellington's rainbow of tonal colors, and the group's uncanny sense of interplay and organic structural unity renders composition and improvisation indistinguishable.

Which is to say that dance, song and intellect receive equal billing on Revue. The group's blowing on the title track, "Little Samba" and "David's Tune" and the surreal romanticism of Hemphill's "Affairs of the Heart" can draw you into a maelstrom of complex emotions. But the wry, puckish voicings of Hemphill's "Slide" and the roll-in-the-mud rocking of Bluiett's "I Heard That" are tuneful and direct. For pure, reflective beauty, Lake's soprano playing on his own "Hymn for the Old Year" and Bluiett's heartbreakingly tender baritone on Murray's "Ming" are unsurpassed. Bathed in the cathedrallike ambiance of Paris' IRCAM recording studio, Revue is a rich, irreverent, intimate portrait of one of the world's greatest bands. (RS 395)

CHIP STERN