A critic's blood might curdle at the sight of an album title such as
Virtuosi, especially given the knowledge that it is a musician-run label, so the musician in charge must have picked that title out himself. It is some solace that at least these musicians, one of
Paul Bley's best trios, weren't referring to themselves as virtuosi at the time this session was recorded. This would have been a warning to look out for pomposity, but that's the last way this 1967 should be described. It comes from the period prior to
Bley's electronics binge, but well into a period of slavish devotion to the compositions of
Annette Peacock, two of which are given extended readings here. The performances, each longer than 15 minutes, include bass solos by
Gary Peacock in which drummer
Barry Altschul creates a kind of musical grout. It is not meant to be a messy description of a process in which the two musicians play with such sympathy that a kind of elaborate mosaic is created, but one that seems like it is being viewed from a great distance, through a fog.
Bley, maybe smoking a pipe while all that is going on, eventually will re-enter, habitually packing some kind of fantastic melody hidden up his sleeve. The bassist continues to function as a lead instrument whenever he wants, the music seeming to require no steady bottom -- other than civilization itself. Listeners could easily have two minds about all this, finding it either endlessly fascinating if the time is there to focus on every detail, or a kind of irrelevant background patter whose components could be reordered endlessly without any change in meaning. The session sat in the can for nearly a decade before
Bley got it out on his Improvising Artists roster.