Some people just don't know how to retire. Sometimes that's bad (Dennis Rodman, anyone?), but sometimes that's good, too. Just look at free jazz pianist Matthew Shipp and his quartet's latest offering, Pastoral Composure. For the past decade-plus, Shipp was the hardest-working pianist in the avant-jazz business, but last year he decided he'd said all he had to say as a group leader. He would continue to play, he announced, but would no longer front his own combos.

Then the Thirsty Ear label offered him the opportunity not only to record the inaugural album of its new Blue Series but also to serve as artistic director of the entire program. The opportunity to take a leadership role with a vanguard group of recordings and performers was clearly too enticing to pass up (Phil Jackson, anyone?).

Like the opportunity, this recording is sweet. The quartet features longtime Shipp collaborator William Parker on bass, Gerald Cleaver on drums and Roy Campbell (Roscoe Mitchell Note Factory, Other Dimensions in Music) on trumpet, pocket trumpet and flugel horn. Shipp, an energetic player who sometimes pounds the keys as if he was trying to dislodge the white ones, here shows off his more melodic side. Mid-tempo tracks like "Visions" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Progression" recall Andrew Hill's mid-'60s Blue Note work with Richard Davis and Elvin Jones. On these two tracks, set themes are stated and then reworked beautifully by everyone in the group. The title tune is much freer, a continual quest for composure, with Campbell's trumpet drifting over a frantic, knotty trio. The opener, "Gesture" (RealAudio excerpt), starts off as a funky march, and as Campbell's horn drifts in, it hearkens back to the martial passages of Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain; with the addition of Parker's buzzing bowing and Shipp's thoughtful dissonance, a quiet war breaks out as the performance turns into a rumbling search for equilibrium.

Along the way, Shipp periodically alters the group configurations. There is one trio performance, "Merge" (Campbell lays out); a lovely duo for trumpet and bass, "Inner Order," in which Campbell channels Fast Last-era Lester Bowie; and two solo piano pieces, Duke Ellington's "Prelude to a Kiss" (RealAudio excerpt) and his own "XTU." These two solo excursions by Shipp are stunning, particularly the reworking of "Prelude," which manages to suggest such varied musical forbears as Art Tatum, Sonny Clark and Bernard Hermann.

Pastoral Composure is an excellent way for newcomers to hear Matthew Shipp in a variety of listener-friendly contexts, while for fans, it's a low-impact refresher. Given the results here, maybe he should retire every year.