Julius Hemphill founded the World Saxophone Quartet in 1976 with Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett and David Murray, left it in 1989, and died in April 1995. The group kept going, first with Arthur Blythe in his chair, then with John Purcell. Requiem For Julius, recorded at Studio Victor in Montreal in 1999 and released by Justin Time in 2000, is the record where the debt is finally paid.

It is also a return to the original format. After several years of adding African drummers, gospel singers and other guests, the four horns are here alone: Lake on alto, Purcell on soprano, Murray on tenor and bass clarinet, Bluiett on baritone. Nils Jacobson, in the notes Justin Time uses for the record, describes a reflective, downtempo session with generous use of space, and the difficulty of telling where the written arrangements end and the improvisation begins.

Nine pieces. Jack DeJohnette's Ebony opens. Murray wrote the title track and Hurricane Floyd; Bluiett contributed Free and Independent Thought; Purcell All Praise; Lake three tunes, Le Sport Suite, Potato Vamp and Tone Poem, the last of them built on the cadence of spoken word. A collective Blues closes. AllMusic heard Lake's sour alto as the closest thing on the record to Hemphill's own sound, and called it a long-overdue official farewell; the Penguin Guide points to it and the 25th anniversary album as the most accessible entries in the WSQ catalogue and the best place to start.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's Justin Time series.