★★★★☆
The American pianist Kenny Barron is a familiar star of jazz, having recorded with numerous legends in multiple settings during a 50-year career. So this straightforward trio album surprises as so many obvious ideas do: why didn’t somebody think of it before? It shows the 72-year-old on brilliant form, tackling originals old and new with the bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and the drummer Johnathan Blake.
Barron’s playing has the sort of lyricism that goes down well in a swanky club, yet it has a depth that makes it much more than satisfyingly suave. The ominous Latin-tinged theme of Lunacy, for example, heralds a straight-ahead solo that packs in sleek arpeggios, escalating right-hand runs and scrabbling chord clusters. That magical tone makes it all sound beautiful but this is complex, edgy stuff.
Bud Like echoes Bud Powell’s boxy block-chorded compositions and reveals Barron retaining his elegance even at high speed. On the beatific Cook’s Bay Blake’s subtle yet emphatic Latin drumming underpins a piano solo stuffed with soulful surprise. Nightfall, by Barron’s late collaborator Charlie Haden, throws the spotlight on the low-key Kitagawa. Barron’s solo is bittersweet and buoyant.
For the album’s centrepiece two rarely heard Thelonious Monk tunes are programmed back-to-back. Shuffle Boil is a distant relative of Bye-Ya (the bridge is practically identical). Barron deftly suggests Monk’s brittleness while throwing in some more congenial colours of his own. The barrelhouse ballad Light Blue, which is played solo, is an even more intriguing blend of the dignified and the discordant. (Impulse!)