The core unit of jazz, the piano trio, is explored in various ways on these recent releases
Bob Ravenscroft plays piano and synthesizer as he leads his team of bassist Dwight Kilian and drummer/synther Rob Moore through 21 songs that vary from 46 seconds to almost 7 minutes. Some of the pieces like “Lost Steps” and “Crying Out” are spacey atmospheric pieces, while acoustic tunes like “Traffic Jam” have a cohesion not unlike The Bad Plus, with some hard hitting stick work by Moore on”Emergence”. Ravenscroft does pretty work on “Tranquility” and is quirky on “Chilly the Kid.” Pastiches with piano and beyond.
Piano legend Hal Galper shows his post bop chops in high quality form at this gig in Edmonton, Canada with his team of Jeff Johnson/b and John Bishop/dr. The Getz/Baker alumnus shows pristine and lovely work on the lyrical “Artist” while digging deep with the mates on the modal “Scufflin’”. The three form a hip groove on “Israel” with Johnson giving thoughtful intros to the scrambling “Cubist” and slapping the sucker on the bluesy “Scene West” with Galper creating sharp angles. These guys got it done to the marrow on this set.