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Anthony Braxton, the composer, multi-instrumentalist, author and educator, has always been more than a jazz musician. In fact, he's often denied he is a jazz musician, much the same way that Duke Ellington did. Both hoped the watchdogs of jazz would then leave them free to pursue whatever they wished, regardless of stylistic boundaries. Neither had much luck with that.

For some diehards, you see, jazz is like the Mafia: once you're in it, you're in it forever, and your loyalty must be absolute. (Look at how jazzbos jumped on Herbie Hancock for funking up.) Hence the flak that greeted Braxton, who started out as an improviser on alto saxophone, for going on to write operas, thorny piano pieces and such — and worse, letting those experiences inform his improvised music. But Braxton could no more give up jazz than Ellington did. His 1974 album, In the Tradition, spawned and gave name to a trend: forward-looking, out cats recording old jazz tunes to confirm their roots in, and love for, the ancestors. (Arthur Blythe later made a standards record with the same title.)

Braxton's latest foray into that field is 23 Standards (Quartet) 2003. A four-CD set recorded all over Western Europe for the Leo label, its pressing was limited to 1000 copies (and therefore likely to live on as a downloadable item long after hard copies have vanished; disc one is the place to start). He digs deep for repertoire: tunes from the '20s ("Crazy Rhythm," "After You've Gone"); numbers by jazz titans Coltrane ("26-1," "Countdown"), Monk ("Off Minor," "'Round Midnight"), Brubeck ("It's a Raggy Waltz," "Three to Get Ready") and Wayne Shorter ("Ju-Ju"); and even some bossa novas — a typically open-minded, open-hearted selection.

His band is shaping up into as good a working group as Braxton's had in years: longtime drummer Kevin Norton sounds looser and more thunderous, and bassist Andy Eulau and guitar wiz Kevin O'Neil gallop across the frets and play finger-knotting lines and chords. But the leader's own alto and sopranino sax solos are the real attraction. Like all great jazz musicians, Braxton understands that timing, timbre and note choices are intimately connected: how slowing the rhythm ever so slightly, sputtering that note and placing it just off center pitch all work to give it triple impact. His tone may be aggressive or growling one moment, parched or disarmingly vulnerable the next.

And what games with rhythm he plays. He may stomp on the offbeat like a ragtime pianist. Sometimes his line will attack the rhythm head-on; sometimes it'll slide backwards over the pulse, moonwalking on ice; sometimes he'll divide a fast phrase into complex groupings — quintuplets, septuplets and other evenly spaced odd-number units — or speed up in the middle of an already speedy phrase.

For all that, no one ranks Braxton among the swingingest jazz lions, even if his accentual patterns are more complex than your average surefire swinger's strong-weak accents: Braxton is more clog than soft-shoe. You can hear why he likes Dave Brubeck — both bring a certain endearing clunkiness to complex rhythmic game-splaying. But I'd no more fault Braxton for his suspenseful timing than I would the pigeonhole-resistant clarinetist Pee Wee Russell — the stammer is part of the charm.

Braxton and Russell also share a scary readiness to lunge for any idea that pops into mind without worrying first if they can pull it off. The self-censor never intervenes to preserve their dignity above all. No wonder some see jazz as heir to Nathaniel Hawthorne's 19th-century American Romanticism: the occasional blemish is proof of authenticity.

If that sounds like muddle-headed malarkey, look at it from the flipside: Why do so many perfectly polished jazz soloists sound boring in the end? 'Cause they're limited by what they know they can execute from previous experience. Every lick they play is certified recycled.

Braxton, by contrast, gleefully seizes on risk to find a new solution every time, one to surprise himself and us. Which is why, whatever else he chooses to be, he'll always have a jazz musician's soul.