Tenor and soprano saxophonist Dave Liebman apprenticed under Miles Davis in his electric period, appearing on cutting-edge experimental jazz-funk 1970s classics like On the Corner, Get Up With It, and Dark Magus. But Liebman’s love of uncompromising acoustic jazz was made abundantly clear just a few years later, thanks to 1979’s Pendulum, one of the great live recordings from the famed Village Vanguard in Manhattan’s West Village. Drummer Al Foster, who played with Liebman on those Davis albums, is just as formidable in this acoustic setting, paired with rhythm-section mate Frank Tusa, the bassist who’d been a member of Liebman’s earlier band, Lookout Farm. Pianist Richie Beirach, also from Lookout Farm, was nicknamed “The Code” for his advanced, 20th-century classical harmonic sense—and for the way he synthesized McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock into a riveting personal style. Flanked by trumpeter Randy Brecker in one of his finest appearances on record, Liebman explores repertoire by Davis (“Solar”), John Coltrane (“Impressions”), Wayne Shorter (“Footprints”), Thelonious Monk (“Well You Needn’t”), and Kenny Dorham (“Blue Bossa”)—not to mention works by Cole Porter (“Night and Day”) and Isham Jones (“No Greater Love”). But almost none of those tunes made it onto the original three-song gatefold LP. “Footprints” was the set closer, and the rest of the program was original: Beirach’s “Pendulum,” based on an enigmatic descending melodic motif, took up all of side one, and Liebman’s lyrical, hard-swinging “Piccadilly Lilly” broke up the prevailing modal flavor of the music with something more active and colorful harmonically, perhaps akin to Atlantic-era Coltrane. Re-released as a deluxe edition in 2008, Pendulum shows the enduring power and appeal of the acoustic quintet model, despite being recorded in a decade commonly thought of as dominated by fusion. “No Greater Love” almost brings to mind Live at the Plugged Nickel, which found the Miles Davis Quintet stretching over well-known standards in 1965, reshaping jazz harmony in the process.