Matt Mitchell – Zealous Angles (Pi Recordings, 2024) *****
Kim Cass – Levs (Pi Recordings, 2024) *****
Dan Weiss – Even Odds (Cygnus Recordings, 2024) *****
By Lee Rice Epstein
Since 2021, we’ve seen three albums of previously unheard and little- or
un-known music recorded by pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali. Mostly known (if at all)
for a single piano trio album recorded under Max Roach’s name, Ibn Ali’s
music fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the complex growth and
development of the piano trio. In preparing to review these albums, I spent
months revisiting dozens of trio recordings from Ibn Ali, Elmo Hope, Herbie
Nichols, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Marilyn
Crispell, Aki Takase, Craig Taborn, Matthew Shipp, and a few key
contemporary players like Jason Moran and David Virelles. It would be
challenging enough to develop a new grand theory of the piano trio—and
anyway, most of my time spent was luxuriating in the music, dazzled by
technique and inventiveness. All this listening was, however, in service of
finding an entry point into writing about pianist Matt Mitchell and the
music of Mitchell, bassist Kim Cass, and drummer Dan Weiss, particularly
following
Matthew Shipp Trio’s exceptional New Concepts In Piano Trio Jazz
, whose title begs questions Mitchell, Kim Cass, and Dan Weiss seem,
unknowingly, to have many responses to.
In a year when he released a landmark solo album, the relative success of
Illimitable could have carried Mitchell well into next year, and yet here he is with
the recorded debut of his longtime trio with bassist Chris Tordini and
Weiss on drums. Much of what’s been written about Zealous Angles
has, admirably (at least, it’s well beyond my technical knowledge), focused
on the technical complexity of the compositions—polyrhythm, polymeter, and
asynchronicity abound
within the written material
—and yet, maybe because I’m a contrarian by nature, I wanted to spend time
specifically listening to this music in the context of its mode. Piano
trios are fascinating in some ways because they’re like prisms: three sides
with a fixed shape and seemingly infinite ways of refracting and projecting
the approach. Mitchell has constructed ways to do this within the music
itself and put it on display for listeners by providing alternate takes
under new names, wholly fresh performances of the same music with different
intentions and results—a decent amount of music gets replayed and
reinterpreted by the trio, and the recurrence of thematic material late in
the album gives the impression of a framing device or linked motif in a
song cycle.
On Cass’s phenomenal Levs, with Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn
Sorey, the trio brings more to the proceedings than merely bass, piano, and
drums. In addition to some augmentation by Laura Cocks on flute and Adam
Dotson on euphonium—with parts added separately—Cass also plays sampler and
Mitchell plays Prophet-6 (one of many follow-ups to the classic Prophet-5
keyboard). Cass’s music is crunchy, which is to say it crackles with energy
and showcases these dance-like rhythms that stutter-step across the drums
and keyboards. And Cass’s bass sounds deep and rich in the mix, even has
he’s taking sharp, surprising pivots along the strings. Just the briefest
sidebar about Sorey here, there just are very, very few artists like him,
and the textured approach he brings to the kit is as varied on
Levs
as it is on his own piano trio album from this year,
The Susceptible Now,
an album that, on the surface, sounds very far from Cass’s, adding to the
ongoing discussion of just how many ways can that format be presented. But
Sorey, much like Mitchell, has always been a player that I suspect more
people think they have figured out than actually have a grasp on
what’s happening in the music—both can swing just as madly as they groove,
and Cass gives them plenty of room for both and then some.
Weiss, who already fronts a piano trio with Jacob Sacks and Thomas Morgan,
mixes things up for Even Odds, bringing in alto saxophonist Miguel
Zenón alongside Mitchell on piano. Even Odds is ridiculously
addictive from the jump, one of the finest examples of just how far a
“piano trio” can stretch to encompass a group’s ideas. One of Weiss’s gifts
as a composer is how brilliantly he builds up a song to both amplify and
challenge his musicians’ gifts. There are fleet, brisk tracks drawn from and
inspired by several of jazz’s hall of fame drummers—as much as he sounds
incredible as always, what these tracks really highlight, though, is his
deep love for the music’s history. Zenón absolutely shines on this album.
With a restrained, sorrowful approach on “The Children of Uvalde,” he plays
exactly what’s needed to bring home this American tragedy without tipping
into bathos. It’s a delicate enough challenge for any ballad, but on
something so charged and emotionally raw, Zenón brings clarity and honesty,
mourning without being overly mournful. Again, it’s a tribute as well to
Weiss’s compositional gifts, where song structures bend and merge with
deftness. Mitchell sounds relaxed throughout, settling deep into the spaces
between the drums and alto. It’s a delightful deception, any close
listening reveals how knotty and varied the keyboard runs can be, followed
by clustered chords and fragile jabs.
If Shipp gave us a new concept in piano jazz, which is to say his trio
playing an entirely new and varied set of music, then Mitchell, Cass, and
Weiss are surely following with their own equally new and varied sets of
music—as different from one another as could be. And we can just celebrate,
no matter what else is happening, that art will continue, will challenge,
will progress.