Roger Thomas enjoys the intimacy and daring of this month’s jazz offerings
March round-up
This isn’t the first time that a selection of recordings featuring instrumentally subtracted lineups (see Jazz Choice) has reached this column in a cluster, almost as if they were huddling together for mutual protection. Happily, everyone can relax: there’s more than enough skill on display here to make creative use of the attendant breathing space. Drummer Will Glaser puts his name to Climbing in Circles, a fine undertaking that sees him merging two pre-existing duos with saxophonist Matthew Herd and pianist Liam Noble, having already made individual recordings with each of them with confusingly similar titles. Trying to keep up with all this brings us to a likeable third album, shot through with the kind of thrown-together spontaneity that can easily collapse in less capable hands but that happily manages to be forthright, gently knowing and sonically detailed. (Ubuntu UBU0075) ★★★★
The convening of Trio Tapestry by Joe Lovano sees the reeds doyen exploring his current preference for the abstract and occasionally enigmatic on Garden of Expression. The formidable pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi are both very much at home in this territory, providing a delicate yet ingeniously detailed canvas for his statements without being hampered by what would be, in this case, the leaden anchor of a bass instrument. Crispell’s style we know and love, but Castaldi’s understanding that the drum kit can actually be subtle is quietly revelatory. (ECM 2685) ★★★★
On the same label, Human, from a quartet led by pianist Shai Maestro and fronted by trumpeter Philip Dizack, also tends toward subtlety, alongside a sense of quiet celebration which is set by the opening track and never quite disappears. Maestro has an allencompassing style, both in his approach to the instrument and in the way he balances innovation and tradition, that allows the single Ellington standard to be bracketed by originals with no sense of gearchanging. Highly commendable, all in all, and, as with Lovano’s album, imbued with the usual impeccable ECM production values. (ECM 2688) ★★★★
Returning to the reeds/bass/ drums idea that brought about this peregrination, Fergus Mccreadie demonstrates that such a trio can express sophisticated compositional ideas as readily as a chamber ensemble with Cairn, an elegant yet spirited programme of original pieces inspired by the folk music and rural environment of the saxophonist’s native Scotland. It’s a very workable fusion that’s existed at least since the heyday of Ken Hyder’s Talisker in the ’70s and ’80s, but Mccreadie’s take on the concept has a freshlyminted presentation that pivots around the finely-developed interaction between the leader and his rhythm section (bassist David Bowden and drummer Stephen Henderson). Sprightly and compelling. (Edition 1165) ★★★★★
Finally, the American composer and pianist Chris Pattishall deserves a special citation for Zodiac, his improbable but brilliant reworking of the 1945 Zodiac Suite by the criminally underrated Mary Lou Williams, artfully updating its classical elements with a contemporary feel and realising the whole as a plangent, attentionholding tour de force with the augmentation of two horns, bass and drums. Remarkable. (Pirates Press, no catalogue number) ★★★★★