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Five Times Surprise brings together a volatile mix of longtime compatriots and newly forged relationships. The distinguished improvisers all boast exceptionally diverse resumes. More than finding common ground, they reveal a vast universe of possibilities fueled by creative conflagration and genre blurring. “We’re improvisers who can walk into a room and create something together,” says the project's original instigator Henry Kaiser, who then listed the salient qualities of his fellow players here: the ability to listen, kindness, generosity, and—rare in this electric realm—a sense of humor. All those factors were at work on this new recording.

It seems to be true of nearly every veteran recording artist that, somehow, an album, or sometimes just a bunch of outtakes or live tracks, get away from the major-label catalogs or the artist's own control and enter into the world of endlessly repetitive licensing. Once that happens, the album will be reissued over and over under different titles with different cover photographs, so to frustrate both the artist and the artist's fans. Anthony Newley almost escaped this fate. But his final album of new recordings, 1992's Too Much Woman, has subjected him to the scourge.