This third Savant recording by Alan Broadbent’s fine trio with bassist Harvie S and drummer Billy Mintz follows the outstanding New York Notes and Trio In Motion. The trio’s releases are a model of spontaneous improvisation in the tradition, pushing it in unobvious ways, with each note deeply felt.
Broadbent comments in an online interview on the spontaneity of the performances: “Everything was new when we played in the studio, which can be kind of dangerous. But that’s what I want, that feeling of unpredictability and the excitement that the unknown brings . . . there is an immediacy to it, a deeper emotional quality.”
The programme is a mix of unobvious standards and jazz standards, and originals. The opener is Hank Mobley’s hard-bop classic This I Dig of You – rarely performed, especially in a piano trio version, so it’s a delight to have this. Edwards and Lawrence’s With The Wind And The Rain In Your Hair gets a plangent interpretation.
Sonny Rollins’s Airegin – another jazz standard by a saxophonist that’s performed infrequently, especially by a piano trio – is a masterclass in Tristano-influenced spontaneous improvisation. Bud Powell’s Blue Pearl gets a masterful interpretation, and the album closes with the third jazz standard by a saxophonist, a superb performance of Charlie Parker’s Yardbird Suite.
Discography
This I Dig of You; Prelude To Peace; With The Wind And The Rain In Your Hair; Dance Only With Me; Airegin; Stairway To The Stars; Blue Pearl; This Is New; Yardbird Suite (59.37)
Broadbent (p); Harvie S (b); Billy Mintz (d). RVS Studio, presumably New York City, 29 April and 27 July 2021.
Savant Records SCD2198
