LAST FLOURISH OF 2010 - Part 1

I've been totally awash with new and amazing trio records recently that I just can't sustain the three paragraph review any longer. I don't actually think I was much of a writer in any case. So from now on and for the foreseeable future I will just post my recommendations with the CD cover and some short text. If the album appears here it means I'd recommend buying it sight unseen/unheard and ask you to just revel in the TRIO RIOT that seems to be pervading the planet. Piano, bass, drums = nirvana.

AARON GOLDBERG TRIO - Home

Beautifully rendered trio setting with added tenor sax from the divine and very much in demand Mark Turner on several tracks. Measured but beautiful and Goldberg is not afraid to rock either with renditions of Monk and Wonder that will enthral.

BENJAMIN SCHAEFER TRIO - Roots and Wings

When will the German trio invasion end? Just when you thought they ruled the roost along comes the gentle but affirmative Benjamin to mix it all up again and set the bar even higher. Sublime.

CESARE PICCO - Light Line

It doesn't come more romantic or angelic than this. I saw him at the Hanoi Opera House this year when he had everyone spellbound with his weaving of light. Highly recommended for anyone who needs to transcend the here and now at least once every 24 hours.

YARON HERMAN TRIO - Follow the white rabbit

I've been a fan of Yaron Herman for a while and was waiting for him to calm down and find his stride. This album is replete with the potential that tells us that we are indeed in the company of one of the new giants of jazz piano and trio.

ANAT FORT TRIO - And If

My 5 year old son recently made up a good game. We put on some music, launch the iTunes visualizer (must be the Classic not the new one which is dull) and then say things the patterns suggest or make us feel like. He comes up with sentences like ‘I feel like an astronaut playing with shooting stars’, or ‘I’m swimming in a dinosaur’s stomach’. The other day I put on And if by the Anat Fort trio, launched the visualizer and almost immediately he said; ‘It feels like I’m exploring inside a clock’. And in some ways he’s spot on. These ten pieces of exquisitely rendered music are all explorations in time and space played with the tenderness and touch of someone blessed by angels.

Israeli Anat Fort who shares her time between her homeland and NYC is a relative newcomer on the trio scene but is someone I suspect will be a leading light in it for years to come. This new release, only her second ECM album has all the hallmarks of the classic label; beautifully recorded, amazing piano, hi-fi separation between drums, Roland Schneider, and bass, Gary Wang, and a sonorific, ethereal mix that you can lose yourself in after just a few bars. This really is beautiful music for all ages. As Butch said to Sundance, ‘Who are these guys?’. My backlog of reviews is growing and growing as new talents like Anat keep arriving and redrawing the boundaries of trio music.

With touches of Jarrett’s gospel inflections and Crispell’s space and compositional economy, Fort is nonetheless a new original voice that we must savour and delight in. Her association with Paul Motian, another lifelong explorer and master of time, on her previous recording is celebrated in two eponymous pieces top and tailing the set which float on a beautiful slow tempo of time remembered, memories past and love. As the final cymbal sizzle fades we get 12 more seconds of silence to give us time to re-enter the world – we need it. The rolling Clouds’ Moving and tender Minnesota see the trio exploring Americana flavours with an ease of expression and lightness of touch I seldom hear so sensitively played. The canon-like En If embodies a deep focused train of thought and the near 10 minute Something ‘Bout Camels is the collection’s masterpiece full of eastern nuance, finessed harmonic structure and rhythmic interplay of the highest order. Lanesboro is full of longing and paints a more classical picture to accompany the soulful Minnesota, a place I’ve never heard celebrated in Jazz but which obviously plays a significant part in Fort's affections. And just in case you were wondering, Nu shows that she can get down in the grit and grime of the funk with the best of them.

This is deeply romantic, evocative art. I end listening to the 50 minute set wanting to weep for all the beauty in the world or for all its dilemmas or both. I still don’t know which but I do know that this is music that will help you understand your own soul.

BENEDIKT JAHNEL TRIO - Modular Concepts

As the by-line of this blog infers, I’m an obsessive, I’m also terribly fickle. I have a new favourite pianist this week. So what’s his name today Paul? Benedikt Jahnel. It just gets better and better in Germany – as if Pablo Held, Jurgen Friedrich, Tim Allhoff and others weren’t enough along comes Benedikt (Bene) and his trio with the equally amazing Antonio Miquel – bass and Owen Howard - drums. With jazz trio X Factor (X as in the irreverent but majestic convergence of technique, swing, soul, tradition, time, vision and ‘the muse’) by the truckload, this is a masterpiece – and amazingly Jahnel’s first trio record although he has been very active in Europe and Stateside. On this blog I’ve chosen to review only music I love – it’s all 5 or more stars here. This can lead to a shortage or repetition of superlatives. This is a problem. The way Benedikt plays the piano is not.

I’m reminded of cascading waterfalls, early dawns, the pull of memory, the echoes of time and long vistas of what ‘might be’ when they play. Don’t be put off by the dull title - this music is far from that. It catches your ear, pulls at your sleeve and whispers sweet somethings in your ears to gain your attention long after the music has stopped. Compositionally it’s incredibly strong and memorable; the trio interacts in conversation at the highest levels of musical architecture and tripolar expression. At home with proto-classical/new age and folk forms, modal excursion and romantic exposition, the songs are both complex and simple, alluring but predictable, layered but accessible, romantic but cerebral. I’m finding it difficult to focus on one track as the programming order is so incredibly well finessed that it’s sounding like one suite of nine pieces seamlessly connected in time and space – a musical continuum of 50 minutes intense listening pleasure.

Something truly special has arrived on the trio scene. Immaculately recorded, glistening through the bytes, you’ll find many avenues to explore in this collection Buy it, don’t hesitate – this is where it’s at.

(Big thank you to J. Lennart Bastert of Paderborn, Germany for the recommendation).

ORRIN EVANS TRIO - Faith In Action

Have you heard Orrin Evans play the piano? With a loaded name like that, try Bill Keepnews, it’s easy to be confused but don’t be – you need to hear him, you should hear him, you will hear him. Making jazz albums since the mid nineties, I’m ashamed to say I’ve only just connected to this piano master born in New Jersey in 1976. Faith In Action is a tribute to the great alto player and composer, Bobby Watson whose tunes make up nearly half the CD. Playing here in the company of Nasheet Waits, drums and Luques Curtis, bass, the trio plays in a straight ahead contemporary style with hints of Tyner, Hancock and Monk at the roots. Evans has remained largely under the radar compared to some of his contemporaries in the US scene like Robert Glasper and Taylor Eigsti - maybe because his approach is totally uncompromising, acerbic and without artifice. He swings hard and unrelentingly; Don’t Call Me Wally, Appointment in Milano, but can also turn corners into reflective exploration and meditations on a mood; Matthew’s Song, Love Remains. I love it when the playing descends (or do I mean ascends?) into the avant garde on the fringes of pieces that seem to fray the edges of near oblivion like MAT-Mat and Wheel Within a Wheel. This is as good as it gets and when he launches into the Monk-washed, Two Steppin’ With Dawn, you hear the pedigree loud and clear.

For people who like well conceived hard swinging solos that knock at the doors of perception with no hint of commercial compromise, Orrin Evans and the trio is for you. It’s like sailing in a choppy sea in a sleek yacht with an experienced crew who know how to ride the crest of the wave. Highly recommended – the title says it all.

BILL CARROTHERS TRIO - Joyspring

I remember Clifford Brown – his Memorial Album was well spun vinyl in my collection. I loved his burnished tone and effortlessly melodic flights into bebop/hardbop stratospheres. Joyspring isn’t so much a tribute to him than a celebration of a musical spirit by one of my favourite pianists of late, Bill Carrothers (see my Zeitgeist post). With so much clarity of purpose, some obscure bebop tunes and fleet-footed masters Drew Gress, bass, and Bill Stewart, drums, on board, the trio puts a new spin on old favourites like Joyspring – transformed into an almost impenetrable reworking of the jaunty tune into a harmonically driven ballad – and I Remember Clifford into a soulful dirge of such protean genius it puts Bill Carrothers up with the other great expressionists like Jamal, Bley etc. Duke Jordan’s Jordu is transformed into something that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the Cotton Club or the Five Spot simultaneously! The super fast in your face beboppers provide welcome contrast to the more oblique reinterpretations and there are plenty of them here to sate your appetite for swing; Gerkin for Perkin, Junior’s Arrival, Powell's Prances and Jacqui, all of which seem to skip on taut trampolines as the trio negotiate the changes in true vintage style but with a lightness and buoyancy that places all three squarely in the 2010s.

It takes someone with Carrothers’ wit, intellect and creativity to make a piano trio offering of songs made famous by a trumpeter (and it has to be said with some Bud Powell thrown in) sound this well conceived and this seems to be one of his trademarks – he always keeps you guessing and never makes a predictable conceptual turn, but when the music starts up you ‘get it’ after the first note and are taken by the hand instead of left hanging, wondering why? – to do this well you are a true great indeed. Go get ‘em Bill – you’re in a real purple patch and I’m waiting for your next offering with bated breath.

PABLO HELD - Forest of oblivion

If you had around 15 bucks to spare and wanted to make a contribution to the advancement of the human race you could do a lot worse than buy Pablo Held’s first CD, Forest of Oblivion. I’m staggered that a 23 year old (21 when he cut this disc - he was winning jazz piano prizes at 12) and his trio can make music as beautiful as this. Whatever Germany is doing in its music education system to help produce talents such as Pablo (and Friedrich and Allhof to name but two more) other countries, please take serious note. I really can’t fault anything on this near perfect rendition of piano trio music - the impressionistic lyricism of Ana Maria, the controlled post-bop of swinging Hand Jive, the stately beauty of Melody. Much more than ably assisted by bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel, this is a stella trio you’ll never regret listening to – try the Hancock inspired Phase II or the probing mood swings of Two Questions One Answer. I see that one of his teachers was one of Britain’s national treasures at the piano, my hero, John Taylor - I can hear his influence but I can also hear the souls of three young men cutting through all the transient flutter in this world and making a statement of intent to help us all appreciate beauty and truth.

I once said to my young cousin Tom that Muddy Water’s 1977 version of Mannish Boy would be on my iPod until my dying day. It still will be Tom, but I’d like to lend you 15 bucks if you have 120 Megs free to make room for Pablo the peacemaker.

JÜRGEN FRIEDRICH - Pollock

Jackson Pollock’s work has often been fertile ground to explore for contemporary jazz musicians who find his work analogous with the rhythms, intensity, irreverence and improvisational qualities of the genre and German pianist Jürgen Friedrich’s, new CD Pollock, is no exception. Teaming up once again with top drawer American bass and drums; John Hebert and Tony Moreno, this collection of deeply reflective musical conversations takes great strides forward in terms of confidence and quality from his previous release Seismo which was at times fey and unfocused. The trio now sound strong with the conviction to explore the idea and spirit of the pieces, not please the crowd with trendy trio sound swatches.

The opener, Drift, starts Debussy-esque and then wanders down other avenues of more intense trenchant passages which Moreno underscores on the tom toms rather than the snare to keep the rolling, wave-like qualities of the piece surging over you. A beautifully reconsidered seven minute offering of ‘Round Midnight seems to drift in and out of different tempos with Friedrich letting the melody directly inform the harmony and rhythm more than the traditional harmonic structure itself – it sounds like the song as sung. Ripple, one of several strong originals, has soulful undertones, blue notes and classical cadences that seem to typify this trio – a breath of fresh improvised air with multiple influences built on a foundation of sensitivity, collaboration and conversation. Pollock is one of three short collectively improvised/composed pieces and evokes the idea of the master at work in which we hear the more disturbed, restless side of the Pollock persona.

The final Flauschangriff has the in and out of tempo feel of ‘Round Midnight though with less subtle, more strident juxtaposition between structure and improvisation – it’s a lovely meandering contemplation of melody and harmony and makes you mindful that this isn’t just another manufactured trio hitting the scene. It’s a special musical unit striving to find new ways to make the strings of the piano and bass and skins of the drums and bronze alloy of the cymbals sound nearer to the outpourings of the human soul - something I suspect Pollock was trying to do with paint on canvas.

BILL EVANS TRIO - 1960 Birdland Sessions

This isn’t a review as such. For me reviewing a Bill Evans album would be akin to reviewing my sister, my wife – the music, as are the people, is just too personal and entwined around my life to find anything like the right words but…

…I do have a story about the music in this new and incredibly good value re-release – Bill Evans 1960 Birdland Sessions. When I was first playing jazz gigs around London in the mid 1980s packing my doublebass into my VW Beetle I was playing with a pianist, Chris Lowe, from north London. He was a great pianist and also a Bill Evans aficionado – he taught me so much and told me so many stories about Bill and the trio and their performances at Ronnie Scotts in the 60s and 70s he frequently went to see. One day after practicing at his house he pulled out what looked like a homemade rough cardboard vinyl album sleeve – it contained a radio broadcast bootleg of the Bill Evans trio with Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian at Birdland in 1960. The first track he played was Tadd Dameron’s Our Delight. It was the most exciting music I’d ever heard. I stood transfixed - a turbo driven trio going for broke and swinging like the world was about to end with a sense of purpose I’d never heard the likes of before. Such intensity and clarity of thought forever breaking, for me at least, the marketing people’s slant of putting Bill Evans into the ‘For Lovers’ ballads box. I looked at Chris as if he had in his hand the Holy Grail of music. My love affair with jazz trios and what they could be capable of delivering to my ears and heart was cemented.

The badly recorded but somehow vital air shots seemed to strip down the music to two things; swing and lyricism. Lafaro sounding intense and focused, Motian like a modern day Gene Krupa giving the high-hat more than its usual attention. I asked Chris to play it several times over the following years but I lost touch with it and later, him. I still recalled it frequently, that unison, near-demented block chord intro forever etched on my soul, and sometimes I searched for it in specialist jazz magazines but I never found it. Then life interrupted and it got relegated somewhere deeper into my memory until now….thanks to this re-issue.

Our Delight - six minutes thirty-eight seconds of utter unrelenting jazz magic (not to mention the other hour of outstanding tracks from the vintage Evan’s period) and wow, that intro, welcome back.

STEFANO BOLLANI TRIO - Stone In The Water

I struggle with words, they either flow in jumbled torrents or it’s like pulling teeth to find two of them to put together that make sense. When I hear a CD like Stefano Bollani’s Stone In The Water they seem like peripheral, blunt instruments. My review heroes are people like John Fordham of the Guardian who says everything that needs to be said and more in 150 words so as an exercise I’m going to try.

Bollani, (b.1972) is one in a line of great Italian jazz pianists that includes another favourite Enrico Pieranunzi and more recently the Alboran Trio, who blend the contemporary jazz tradition with European classical and folk influences and tones of Latin flavour. In this set he includes a Jobim; Brigas Nunca Mais, a Poulenc; Improvisation 13 en la Mineur and some memorable originals from him and his Danish rhythm section Jesper Bodilsen, bass and Morten Lund, drums. Romantic lyricism is the focus here played with such a tender unsentimental gentleness and inner conviction of what beauty can be when heard, that it feels like a definitive statement on the matter. Unlike the quirky slightly esoteric interpretations on his previous solo piano release, here Bollani is setting out to communicate with a broader brush and shared empathy required of the trio format. There’s an assured mood of confidence, mastery and story-telling that pervades each tune that will stand the test of time. Bollani is letting us into his world note by note and Stone In The Water lets us know that it’s going to be a beautiful place to explore.

OK, so 186 words and a bit stiff methinks. Any tips John? Anyone?

TIM ALLHOFF TRIO - Prelude

Just when you think things couldn’t get any better more often than not a surprise is waiting that opens a new vista of listening stimuli. That surprise is the German Tim Allhoff Trio – Prelude – his maiden CD. Now let’s get something straight here – we (and I include myself here) need to develop a new vocabulary for the new post Mehldau/EST generation pianists and trios that frames them in current times on their own terms. It’s no longer enough to start reviews with ‘the list’ – this new breed of piano trio needs to be listened to in today's context. I love Tim Allhoff’s trio including the easily anarchic Bastian Jutte on drums and risk taking skydiver Andreas Kurz on bass. Tim’s vision is clear on evergreen Long Ago and Far Away that starts with a contemporary rock block chord intro that seamlessly converts to up-tempo brushes on snare and fleet fingered in and out of tempo right hand lines that anyone from Count Basie to Cecil Taylor would have been proud of. Seven and a half minutes of relentless deep swinging improvisation, the trio sounding like a unit of momentum that could take on any New York basement jazz club and melt the paint off the walls. Thanks to the current renaissance of the piano trio (of course driven by Mehldau, EST et al), bands like Tim’s can now embrace all styles without fear of recrimination, out moded-ness or not fitting into a particular marketing box.

His beautifully nimble left hand often fills in much more than the voicings to the harmony - sometimes Bach-like, sometimes Tatum-like, he can pull off a cover of Don’t Speak simply because he’s not afraid to keep busy and creative in both hands - I really admire his creativity and risk taking. The beautifully measured but complex Ikkakuju sees the trio at their best, contrapuntal lines from bass and piano underpinned (I actually mean ‘overpinned’) by the fleet, textured drumming of Jutte. There’s a lot to get into here listening after listening. The originals show a level of thought and care that’s heartwarming to hear. When you read titles like Waltz For Jane Austen and Song For Mrs Jonathan Brisby you know you’re in the hands of someone who draws inspiration from a deep well full of contemporary themes, humour and new perspectives. When you get to the brilliantly shining Ohne Titel, the trio does eventually lay down some new trio trademark unison bass and left hand piano lines but Jutte’s drums and Allhoff’s right hand keep it interesting and complex, never tedious. And then, just when you were wondering how they'd make it to the finish line, the trio lays an utterly sublime and dignified version of Don’t Explain on you to conclude the set, that serves as a reminder of the roots and routes all good jazz musicians have studied and followed, you know that all this – all this fine iridescent music - is the beginning of something special. The over three minute solo coda is like a whole new chapter appended to this beautiful old standard that would have made even Lady Day sigh. Dang! seriously good music herein.