Neither raw talent nor highly polished technique is enough by itself to distinguish a jazz trumpeter roughly a century after the early masters defined the genre. Christian Scott has demonstrated both the aptitude and the work ethic to set himself apart since he was a teenager in uncle Donald Harrison’s band, but separating yourself from even the greatest of influences remains the most daunting task facing a young musician. In a sense, it becomes less about how well you play, than about how well you project your personality through your performances and especially your compositions. Like many of his peers, Scott’s studio work is eclectic almost to the point of stylistic confusion as he is marketed away from jazz toward the more lucrative passageways of pop music. But Scott can be one of the most exciting jazz bandleaders in the world, and last summer he was at the top of his game leading a perfectly balanced group. I saw them play a sublime club date at the Montreal Jazz Festival, music so powerful people were climbing out of their seats to salute him by the end of the set. His presence and the band’s emotive power recalled the 1960s Miles Davis quintet that produced a run of masterpieces from E.S.P. to Filles de Kilimanjaro. Roughly a month later the band made this live recording at the Newport Jazz Festival, and it’s every bit as good as what I remember from Montreal.

From the brooding opening strains of “Died In Love,” with its arco bass lines from Joe Sanders and Jamire Williams’ drums falling like hard rain behind the plaintive held notes of Scott’s trumpet, it’s apparent that Scott is fathoming a deep lake of emotion in his compositions. “Died In Love” takes a moody walk along a precipice, with Aaron Parks playing a minor key piano passage at each chorus that creates a slow building tension which never resolves. “Litany Against Fear” follows like the second movement in a suite, this time featuring a probing, angular electric guitar solo from Matt Stevens before Scott’s ruminative statement. Walter Smith plays a tenor saxophone solo that begins with a terse, Wayne Shorter-like approach and builds behind an insistent piano ostinato from Parks to a steady boil without ever losing its subtlety. Everything is played sotto voce yet there’s an electricity to the performance driven by dramatic tension, and the ecstatic audience response attests to its effectiveness. It’s rare to hear this kind of collective depth of communication and soft, intuitive touch in such young musicians.

Scott takes his penchant for diffidence to an even more exquisite level on “Isadora,” floating in space, delivering behind-the-beat single notes like tender kisses as Park follows him with a simple, Bach-like figure that creates an effect like the drifting of consciousness before sleep.

This somnambulist reverie is followed by a lengthy drum invocation which leads to a trumpet flurry from Scott on “Rumor,” the first of Stevens’ two compositions on the set. The piece uses a cleverly designed series of rhythmically contrasting instrumental statements for its theme before Parks plays a propulsive bridge that launches into powerful solos from Smith on tenor, Parks on piano and Stevens on guitar.

“Anthem,” the powerful title track from Scott’s second album, forces the pace to another level and loses none of its punch in live performance despite the absence of the Brother J rap on the album. Stevens’ “The Crawler” plies its beautiful melody over a dirge time march, then Scott gives himself the spotlight with the central solo in “James Crow Jr., Esq.” before closing the set with his signature tune from the debut album, “Rewind That.

This impressive set shows that, for all the pointless attempts to paint Scott as something more than a mere jazz musician, he and his band are most effective when they get down to basics and let that music speak for itself.