“People remember melodies, not harmonic progressions,” Arriale said recently, and that’s surely the key to this sensitive pianist’s approach. Though her style doesn’t stray far from the mainstream, the American applies her touch to pop tunes as well as jazzish originals. The Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun is a delicate reverie; the Stones’ Paint it Black builds a slow-burning intensity; tenor sax adds to the drama of the brooding Nine Inch Nails song Something I Can Never Have and an Arabic oud shifts her trio to the Middle East on Arriale’s own Dance of the Rain. Here the expanded line-up reveals that, for all the good taste, it has raw energy, too.
(In & Out; out now)