When ACT boss Siggi Loch asked the three European musicians who created this glowing collage of folksy melodies, Latin-grooving and freely roaming improvisations for their three favourite jazz records, they all included one by Keith Jarrett. These singular artists aren’t Jarrett mimics, but see the piano giant as a transitional bridge between the American and European jazz cultures that had shaped their respective soundworlds for years.
Swedish bassist/composer Lars Danielsson, former Loose Tubes UK guitarist John Parricelli and lyrical Finnish trumpeter Verneri Pohjola came together at ACT’s invitation to record in the warm and woody acoustic of an old Bordeaux wine chateau – Danielsson and Parricelli as old friends, Pohjola as a newcomer who fitted the all-acoustic bill. Maybe they didn’t know that much about wine, but they knew plenty about mingling long-matured musical sensibilities. Danielsson’s Cattusella begins with a gliding guitar line over a muscular bass hook, before Pohjola’s caressingly lustrous trumpet sound arrives. Playing With the Groove is a Latin-hooky dance with Pohjola in nimble muted-Miles mode over Parricelli’s urgent strumming, while La Chanson d’Hélène (a Danielsson adaptation of the theme from the 1970 Claude Sautet movie Les Choses de la Vie) opens as a romantic dreamscape before the appropriate entry of the composer’s quick-stepping pizzicato and Pohjola’s quivering trumpet improv.
Pohjola sounds exquisitely like a casually humming voice on the Duke Ellington classic Mood Indigo, and L’Époque is Danielsson’s interpretation of a Debussy solo-flute piece that melts into Pohjola’s multiphonic upper range. A standout is the trio’s version of the Ron Sexsmith hit Gold in Them Hills, played as straight as the composer’s version (once recorded with Coldplay’s Chris Martin) but with a take on its emotional resonance unique to this trio.
Also out this month
The Bad Plus brilliantly redefined the role of jazz’s classic piano/bass/drums trio (embracing influences from Kurt Cobain to Stravinsky) but after founding pianist Ethan Iverson’s 2017 departure, they’ve been evolving a different mix. On Complex Emotions (Mack Avenue) guitarist Ben Monder and saxophonist Chris Speed join original members Reid Anderson and David King on a more ambient soundmix of breathy tenor-sax tones and Frisellian guitar effects, but still with plenty of King’s characteristically hypnotic-to-manic percussion energy beneath. A gleefully swinging 2024 incarnation of the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra (Lights on a Satellite, In+Out Records) heralds the still-active presence of remarkable saxophonist/leader Marshall Allen’s 100th year on this planet; and UK singer/artist Paula Rae Gibson’s dark, personal, but compelling interior world on The Roles We Play to Disappear (33 Xtreme) is creatively embraced by the avant-jazz/experimental quartet of Kit Downes, Matthew Bourne, guitarist Rob Luft, and trumpeter Alex Bonney.
