Month of February , 2008

Although Big Picture is the first release from Trio M, the collective piano trio featuring Myra Melford, Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson, it evinces a mature musical discourse and rapport that one would expect to find in groups with a longer history. This shouldn't come as a surprise given the talents and histories of its individual participants; indeed, three mid-career (in the jazz world anyway) musicians with sensitive improvisational talents such as Ms. Melford, Mr. Dresser and Mr. Wilson should be held to high standards of musical output. The music contained in Big Picture covers a lot of ground - it's at true collective in the sense that all three receive writing credits on the album, but the reason the album works musically is that there is a cohesive quality to their playing and interaction that binds the diverse compositions together into a coherent whole.

The egalitarian piano trio is nothing new to improvised music, but in any individual instance it's interesting to hear how issues of time, rhythm and harmony are handled by the participants. In this case there seems to be a very fluid sense of roles amongst the three musicians, with each of them fulfilling more traditional capacities at times and then quickly changing places.

Compositionally, I find Mark Dresser's tunes the most interesting, which is interesting because he's the musician I'm the least familiar with on this record. I have a few of Myra Melford's records as a leader, and I don't think you can swing a stick in a jazz record store and not hit a recording with Matt Wilson on it. I hadn't heard anything of Mark Dresser's as a leader, and I'd only heard his playing with Anthony Braxton - this record is enough to pique my interest in seeking out some of his own records (if anyone has a suggestion, please let me know in the comments).  Amongst the other tracks, Myra Melford's "Secrets to Tell You" is perhaps the most stunning.

I was interested to read three reviews of this band live from their recent tour (what a wealth of documentation blogging gives us!) - their impressions reflect the sense I get from the recording, which is three musicians who found a collective aesthetic that works for them. Pat noted that he expected a bigger sound given some of the participants, but the dynamic range seems to work for them in this setting. This shouldn't be confused for compromise - rather, I hear three musicians committed to a collectivity that works. I wish I could have seen the tour in person, but on national jazz tours Chicago is a tough stop to make geographically - more often than not we get a wave from an airplane as the musicians fly from coast to coast overhead.

If you have any misgivings about this trio due to any taste about the individual players contained within, put them aside. This music works, and if we accept as a basic premise of improvisation the goal of communication, then Big Picture is nothing short of a resounding success.

I've been thinking about my vocabulary and how to approach reviewing recorded music. I enjoy writing about music and I like spreading the word about music that I'm listening to that others might enjoy, but I've been struggling with how to best convey a sense of the music. My goal is to somehow do it justice outside the conventional framework of criticism, in the sense that I don't see myself as a critic or frame my approach to the music in what would be conventionally understood as critical. I know what I like and I know what ends up on the cutting room floor, but I'm less concerned with letting people know about the latter. I don't mind pointing out what I perceive as blemishes in the former either, or else I risk overly laudatory prose. I think it ultimately comes down to a desire to write creatively and in doing so put some of the real creative energy and risk into writing that I hear in the music. In that spirit I've been doing a lot of reading, what amounts to writerly pedagogy I suppose, but I keep coming back to the notion that the music itself is the best teacher. I don't think I've found the answer yet and I'm not particularly satisfied with my progress on the matter, but with that said, I have a few reviews I'll be posting soon.