There aren't many artists with so singular a vision as that of late Fred Anderson, who died June 24 at the age of 81. There are fewer to be certain if the list is restricted to members of that exalted and nebulous class called "masters." It's a word that, in jazz, gets thrown around a little too casually. A master composer might excel at writing for string quartet as well as symphony. A master musician might be fluent in a variety of instruments. But a mastery like Anderson's is harder to quantify.

For much of his career, Anderson's work went in one direction, his muse speaking a single language. He was beholden to the heroic stance of the 1960s, to the powerful black men with saxophones in hand, to Ayler and Coltrane and Shepp and Sanders, his contemporaries even if his own fame would come much later. Within his hard-edged playing, echoes of that era were more than apparent. But so were the influences of