The power of three has had a great press for a long time, embedded as it’s been in the tenets of Christians, witches, Buddhists, or just the beginnings, middles and ends of fireside stories. And in the thrifty music-making years after the second world war, the economical appeal of the jazz trio – often led by piano virtuosi such as Bill Evans or Ahmad Jamal, occasionally by such sax giants as Sonny Rollins – also revealed just how much spontaneous creativity could fly from minimal gatherings.
Linda May Han Oh, the Malaysia-born, New York-based Australian bassist and composer whose star employers have included Vijay Iyer and Pat Metheny, leads this standout example, composing everything except for covers of Geri Allen and Melba Liston tunes. Her trio partners are those stellar inventors of contemporary jazz, Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet) and Tyshawn Sorey (drums).
Akinmusire, a master of soft-blown sonic ambience and Miles-inspired urgency, initially edges his way tremulously into Oh’s racing bass hook on the opening Portal as if retracing distantly remembered paths with her (they first collaborated on Oh’s 2009 trio-leadership debut, Entry), before hurtling into dizzying top-end squeals, skimming double-time lines, and half-valve note-bends. The title track’s whispering, short-phrase melody blossoms amid Oh’s caressing pizzicato and Sorey’s spacey rimshots; Acapella’s delicately descending passages are embraced by bass flurries and hissing cymbals; and Akinmusire is in his most rhythmically Miles-inspired on the staccato, hip-hopish Noise Machinery.
The guilelessly delicate Paperbirds is a highlight, as is the soaringly rhapsodic Folk Song. Allen’s Skin is edgy, brittle and eventually free-jazzily wild, and Liston’s meditative Just Waiting glows with the compelling tonal warmth of both Akinmusire’s horn and Oh’s sonorities. The title Strange Heavens unerringly nails this music.
Also out this month
Unavailable except as used vinyl since 1973, Original (Cadillac) is an improv duet between quixotic British alto saxophonist Mike Osborne and the unique Monk/Ellington-inspired pianist/composer and éminence grise Stan Tracey. Osborne was a gifted juggler of lilting lyricism and spine-tingling Eric Dolphy-esque intensity, and Tracey a powerhouse of joltingly dissonant rhythmic propulsion, pushed to the spontaneous edge on this 1972 live recording. French accordionist Vincent Peirani’s Living Being IV: Time Reflections (Act) features this eclectic virtuoso in a genre-fluid quartet with saxophone partner Émile Parisien on an elegant fusion of Fender Rhodes piano grooving, booming basslines, rich hymnal melodies, 16th-century polyphonic ideas, a tribute to German piano virtuoso Michael Wollny, and a lot more. And the prize-winning UK vocalist Emma Smith’s Bitter Orange (La Reserve) vivaciously confirms that her turn-on-a-dime timing, shrewdly subtle originals, and standard-song empathy make her a mainstreamer in a class of her own.
