Sax trio

Ever since Sonny Rollins' Way Out West was released in 1957, with Shelley Manne on drums and Ray Brown on bass, the saxophone-bass-drums line-up has been a popular vehicle in jazz, and especially in free jazz because it offers so much room for soloing, for dynamic interplay and especially for powerplaying without having to care for the arrangements needed to avoid chaos with a bigger band. He kept using the trio setting for many more outings to come, of which the most recommended ones are : Night At The Village Vanguard and Freedom Suite.

Here is a list of my recommended list of sax trios (no specific order, yet the best ones in my opinion are highlighted in green):

Free jazz

Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity
Charles Gayle - several
Trio X - all of them
Peter Brötzmann - many trios worth listening to
Ed Blackwell - What It Take
Michael Blake - Right Before Your Very Ears
Michael Bisio - Composance
Tim Berne - Paraphrase/Pre-emptive Denial
Rashid Bakr/Gjerstad/Parker - Seeing New York From The Ear
Roscoe Mitchell -several
Joseph Jarman - several
The Thing - Live At Bla, Garage, Crazy Wisdom
Tripleplay - Gambit
Aoki/Hunsinger/Jarman
Vandermark/Oles/Oles - Ideals
Frode Gjerstad - The Welsh Chapel; The Other Side; Last First (and many more)
DKV Trio - Live At Wels & Chicago
Drake, Beger, Parker - Evolving Silence Vol. 1 & 2
Fred Anderson - The Milwaukee Tapes (with William Parker, Hamid Drake) - and many more
Free Music Ensemble - Cuts
Gebbia/Ligeti/Pupillo - The Williamsburg Sonatas
Natural History - Fur
Michael Marcus - Ithem
Ivo Perelman - Black On White
Assif Tsahar/Peter Kowald/Rashied Ali - Deals, Ideas + Ideals
Adam Lane Trio - Zero Degree Music, Music Zero Degree
Liebig/Golia/Mintz - No Train
Maghostut Trio - Live At Last
William Parker - ... And William Danced
Kahil El'Zabar - Renaissance Of The Resistance (and many more)
Kidd Jordan - Palm Of Soul
John Heward - Let Them Pass
Dewey Redman - Tarik
Peter Janson - Live At The Glenn Miller Café

Modern creative

Spaceways Inc. - Version Soul (Vandermark, McBride, Drake)
Spaceways Inc. - 13 Cosmic Standards
Rodrigo Amado - Teatro
Michael Bates - Outside Sources
Mark Helias - Atomic Clock
Thomas Chapin - Third Force Live
Tony Malaby - Adobe
David Murray - Circles Live In Cracow
Julian Argüelles - Partita
Greg Osby - Channel Three
Jason Roebke - Rapid Croche
Oles/Trzaska/Oles - Mikro Muzik, LA Sketch Up
Oles/Pieronczyk/Oles - Gray Day
Oles/Jörgensmann/Oles
Adam Pieronczyk - Plastinated Black Sheep
Danny Zamir - Satlah, Exodus
Nicolas Simion - Nick At Night, Back To The Roots
Sticks & Stones - Shed Grace
Henri Texier - Remparts d'Argile

Mainstream

Branford Marsalis - Trio Jeepy
Loren Stillman - Trio Alto
We Three - Three For All (Liebman, Swallow, Nussbaum)
Steve Swallow - Damaged In Transit
Jeff Johnson - Near Earth
Lenny Popkin - Lenny Popkin

Modern - funk/rock-influenced

Living Daylights - several
Happy Apple - all of them
Slang - Los Locos, Save The Chills
Erwin Vann - Some Sounds
AKA Moon - only the early ones are worth listening to