Pianist, composer, and bandleader
Uri Caine takes time out from his myriad projects to record a straight jazz trio date at the illustrious Village Vanguard. For all of his wonderful quirks and musical personalities,
Caine is foremost a fine jazz pianist and stylist. Along with bassist
Drew Gress and drummer
Ben Perowsky, that persona is on display here and it shines in a program of originals, a jazz classic, and standards.
Caine's reading of
Wayne Shorter's now canonical "Nefertiti" is elegant and stylish; it's full of twists and turns from the modal base and snakes its way through jazz and popular music history in the solo. The ensemble interplay here is almost symbiotic; each chromatic shift is anticipated by the rhythm section and glides into place. On
Caine's "Most Wanted," the piece begins with a bluesy
Ramsey Lewis Trio groove shimmer before elliptically mutating into a
Bill Evans-styled harmonic exploration of the changes and modulations in the tune's melodic intervals -- complete with Latin-tinged rhythmic invention by
Perowsky. The bopped-out, exceptionally long read of
Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" amounts to a strident blowing session with
Caine offering double-handed counterpoint at sometimes dizzying speeds. In all, this is a very satisfying date, offering a complex and erudite portrait of the pianist as a monster improviser and an exceptionally sophisticated arranger. ~ Thom Jurek