Fred Hersch: The Surrounding Green (ECM 2836)
Three American pianists are presented here for your pleasure, with first up Fred Hersch on what is now his third ECM release. His initial album for the label in 2022, The Song Is You, interestingly set him alongside Enrico Rava on flugelhorn, while 2024’s Silent, Listening was a fairly predictable but still fine solo set. This new set is a classic piano trio outing, with Drew Gress on bass and Joey Baron on drums, both long-time partners of Hersch although they have never actually recorded together as a trio before now. Three of the pieces are by Hersch, with Ornette Coleman’s Law Years making a welcome appearance beside Charlie Haden’s First Song, Egberto Gismonti’s Palhaço and the Gershwin standard Embraceable You.
A refined sense of understatement defines this set throughout, the three-way communication and interplay of the trio consistently delivered in exquisite fashion. The trio might stretch out a bit on the Coleman free swinger, but Hersch’s own title track defines this set in its quiet demeanour, the pianist showing his obvious debt to that reticent trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. Bassist Gress makes his mark with a finely delineated pizzicato solo on Palhaço before he is joined by Baron on brushes and then a playful Hersch to gently end proceedings, their sense of studied nonchalance continuing into Embraceable You. Haden’s First Song is suitably introduced by a plaintive bass solo from Gress, the link this song has with the trio being that Haden himself played on one of Hersch’s earliest studio dates in 1987, with Barron on drums. The current trio give it a reverential treatment, its haunting melody unfurling slowly, before Hersch’s concluding Anticipation lives up to its title in suitable fashion.
Some listeners will find this set a tad too refined for their tastes, a touch too reserved and subdued, but Hersch is nothing if not consistent, refining his style and musical approach on every set he plays. Another welcome outing from a piano master.
Noah Haidu: Standards III (Infinite Distances ID2501)
Noah Haidu’s acclaimed take on standards now reaches its third volume, the same trio of Buster Williams on bass and Billy Hart on drums from the second volume playing on four tracks alongside a new trio of Gervis Myles on bass and Charles Goold on drums on another five. Two more musicians make return appearances from the first volume. Yet the shifting personnel is beside the point here, for Haidu creates his own uniformly distinctive style, the standards themselves setting a high improvisational bar for everyone. As before, the selection is inspired, such warhorses as Ellington’s evocative Things Ain’t What They Used To Be and Thad Jones’s perfectly poised A Child Is Born sitting alongside Willard Robinson’s ruminative Old Folks, distinguished by bassist Peter Washington’s fine pizzicato solo intro, and Haidu’s own fond tribute to Stevie Wonder among his own compositions. Haidu’s style is always light and clear but he is strong on establishing a working groove and while imaginative in his playing keeps musical embellishments to a necessary minimum.
Slipstream, in its way a showpiece for Steve Wilson’s guest appearance on alto saxophone, stands out as a striking reinterpretation of the title track from Haidu’s debut album that holds its own alongside any familiar standard, while Haidu bows out in style in his unaccompanied Tonight … Teach … Me. But it is invidious to highlight individual tracks when excellence is everywhere. Piano trios might dominate jazz today, but this one is in a class of its own. Enjoy.
Carol Liebowitz & Nick Lyons: The Inner Senses (SteepleChase/LookOut SCCD 33152)
In complete contrast is this set of 10 contemporary jazz improvisations by pianist Carol Liebowitz and alto saxophonist Nick Lyons, a longstanding New-York-based duo that first played together in 2007. Liebowitz has a classical background while Lyons, a former music student from Oberlin Conservatory, brings more of a jazz sensibility to his playing. What brings them together, on this their second duo release, is a fully shared joint language that deliberately eschews solos and accompaniment to pursuit of an inner sense of collaboration and exploration. At times playful, as on the Ornette-style Ontology, elsewhere, as on Aurora, both serious and imaginative, their collaboration brings out the best in both of them, Lyons often operating in a lower register, Liebowitz alternating gentle phrases with the occasional more forceful intervention. Their performances are at once complex but also direct and engaging, both abstract and melodic as required. Nothing is forced, nothing strained, and if there was such a category as cool improvisation, this set would define it perfectly.
