Every so often a truly exceptional group sneaks up on the inside lane and takes the jazz world by surprise. The trio of the British saxophonist Tim Garland with his American counterparts the pianist Geoffrey Keezer and vibraphonist Joe Locke, known as Storms/Nocturnes, have been around for ten years or so, but in London to launch their new album Via (released this week) they proved that they have matured into something quite remarkable in contemporary jazz.
The line-up of piano, vibes and saxophone seems an unlikely combination. There’s no percussion and no bass player, but the rhythmic emphasis and the tonal depth is shared between the players. Most responsibility rests on Keezer, who sits at the keyboard looking like a bemused, bespectacled version of Hergé’s Tintin. His playing is far from bemused, supplying pedal notes behind Locke’s impassioned vibraphone solos, shifting in and out of classical pastiche with wry humour on a piece commemorating the Californian “Bach dancing and dynamite society”, and tearing off some of the most dazzlingly competitive solos to be heard here for years.
Keezer’s own composition Daly Avenue was a romping blues, giving full rein to Locke’s showmanship — dancing balletically on and off the foot pedal of the vibes and flourishing his four mallets like a dervish. Ideas zipped to and fro between keyboard and vibes, before Garland muscled into the fray with some spectacular tenor playing. His deft shifting from tenor to soprano saxophone, and his canny excursions on the bass clarinet, give the trio tonal variety. One moment his bass clarinet was caressing the snowflakes, conjuring up a wintry Central Park. The next his soprano was evoking the farmyard cackle of daybreak in the Tuscan hills. All three players had written programmatic pieces with a sense of time and place and their writing was as well-matched as their playing.
When Jacqui Dankworth made a surprise appearance in a beautiful rendition of her late father’s song It Happens Quietly, a fourth timbre was added to the group. The message of the lyrics aptly summed up the trio’s achievement in matching passion and commitment to the gentle genre of chamber jazz.