Since Louis Armstrong’s day, nearly every major jazz trumpet player has worked primarily in bands of five pieces or more: the trumpeter himself, a three-piece rhythm section (piano, bass, drums), and a saxophone. Saxophone-playing leaders often work in quartets, but trumpeters seem to need another horn playing alongside them. Why? For one, the trumpet is physically harder to blow, and most trumpeters wear themselves out if they’re playing constantly. Also, the trumpet lays harder on the ear as well as on the lips, and listeners require the contrast of a softer instrument.

Charles Tolliver, who served as a sideman with Jackie McLean, Andrew Hill, Horace Silver,and Max Roach,has spent most of his career as a leader avoiding the familiar trumpet-saxophone front line. Both of Mr.Tolliver’s latest ventures involve different kinds of trumpet-led ensembles – one smaller and one much bigger than the trumpet quintet.

The smaller group is Mr. Tolliver’s quartet, which is extensively documented on a new three-CD set from Mosaic Records (Mosaic Select 20), featuring live performances from 1970 and 1973. The larger group is the Charles Tolliver Big Band, which is appearing this week at Birdland.

Mr. Tolliver has been leading big bands off and on for 35 years. For the opening set on Wednesday, he and his 15 sidemen (four other trumpets, five saxes, three trombones, and rhythm) played very fast, very loud, very hardhitting, very exciting compositions mostly by the leader.The music is essentially an orchestrated version of hard bop, drawing on occasional postmodern modal and free playing. Mr. Tolliver’s compositions and arrangements are less nuanced and complex than those of Thad Jones or Maria Schneider; instead, they are driven by the blues and visceral, high-energy thrills.

Throughout, Mr. Tolliver stressed a strong opening melody and paid equal attention to the backgrounds behind his soloists, supplying figures that both complemented and contrasted with what the improvisers were doing. On his second selection, “Wiff Love,” another veteran trumpeter, Jimmy Owens, played an inspired primary solo, accompanied by crisp Latin accents from the rhythm section led by pianist Ronnie Mathews.

The piece ended audaciously as saxophonists Bill Saxton (tenor) and Craig Handy (alto) improvised different lines simultaneously and polyphonically; they were eventually joined by the other saxophonists – Todd Bashore (alto), Billy Harper (tenor), and Howard Johnson (baritone) – and then by the trombones and trumpets as well. As the piece ended, all the horns were playing individual, free-form lines while the rhythm continued to stick to the same pre-set pattern.

This band, unfortunately, doesn’t play a lot of ballads,although the group did provide a bit of a rhythmic departure by opening with a fast waltz, “Rejoicing,” that showed that 3/4 can kick just as much butt as 4/4.This band plays loud – very loud – and Birdland’s sound system is also on the loud side. (I don’t know why a big band even needs amplification in a club that size, except to boost the piano and bass.) Though I enjoyed the set,my ears were thoroughly exhausted after an hour.

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Mr. Tolliver’s live sessions of the early 1970s,as heard on the new Mosaic Select set, featured a quartet with a much smaller dynamic and tonal range than his current orchestra (though both groups share a common bassist, Cecil McBee).These shows took place in 1970 at Slugs, the Lower East Side jazz mecca, and at a concert hall in Tokyo three years later. Mr. Tolliver initially released the results on Strata-East, the independent label he and his pianist and partner, Stanley Cowell, founded in 1971.But one full disc of the Mosaic box (73 minutes worth of music) consists of previously unissued tracks.

This isn’t quite free playing, but both “Drought” and “On the Nile” open with rubato, prayer-like invocations of the kind prevalent in late 1960s jazz. Among the discoveries are Neal Hefti’s “Repetition,”played in honor of Charlie Parker, and a dedicatory piece to John Coltrane, “Our Second Father,” that received a marathon 20-minute reading in Japan. The outstanding ballads are Thelonious Monk’s classic “‘Round Midnight,” and “Truth,” the latter being the first tune Mr. Tolliver ever recorded, alongside Jackie McLean in 1964.

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Mr.Tolliver is involved in yet another noteworthy venture: He is collaborating with the wonderful pianist composer Andrew Hill.The two made several outstanding albums for Blue Note in 1968, and now they have teamed up again for the label on “Time Lines.” Mr. Hill and Mr. Tolliver will also be playing together in Birdland in March, but that, as they say, is a story for another column.

The Charles Tolliver Big Band will perform again January 27 & 28 at Birdland (315 W. 44th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-581-3080).