Bobby Zankel's 14-piece big band pulls its members from all over the Philly jazz spectrum, from hard-boppers to avantists, longtime vets to young up-and-comers—most of them bandleaders and composers in their own right. But the altoist's dense, tightly woven arrangements force the ensemble to breathe as one. By surrounding the soloists with a latticework of disparate voices rather than merely vamping while they blow, Zankel forces the improvisers to interact with the written material in buoyant conversation. The four extended compositions (three split into two halves) on the Warriors' debut CD seem to grow organically, like a time-lapse film of a plant bursting to life, more and thornier branches emerging from the central stem and flowering in surprising and beautiful ways.