You and the Night and the Music

The two-time Grammy winning arranger (for Natalie Cole and Charlie Haden featuring Shirley Horn) is used to working with big band charts and multi-harmonic orchestral arrangements, but at heart he's a pianist with a great love for standards and all things jazz. The idea on this beautiful trio date is to go small, strip down to the basics of seven classics and see what he — long a believer in the often unpredictable joys of improvisation — can do with the swinging help of bassist Brian Bromberg and drummer Joe La Barbera. For those who love piano trio music, the answer is, quite a lot. The tunes range in time from six-and-a-half to nine minutes, plenty of time to have intricate emotional conversations that dash on unexpected journeys. The title track starts out like a ballad, but within minutes becomes a spirited, jaunty stroll with rushes of flurried ivories keeping pace above the brushes and Bromberg's cool throb. They play "I Wish I Knew" a little simpler, as a graceful romance, but pick up the pace with the odd locomotive meters and snappy basslines of "With the Wind and the Rain in Her Hair." "What's New" begins with a low register cadenza underpinning some wild upper register movement before settling into a tender, reflective pocket. It's beautifully played, but the most remarkable feature is the choice of material which draws more obscure selections from familiar names. All the more open palette for the trio to play with.