Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow - Life Goes On

Styles: Piano, Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2020
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 56:44
Size: 130,6 MB
Art: Front

(6:00) 1. Life Goes On: Life Goes On
(4:46) 2. Life Goes On: On
(4:10) 3. Life Goes On: And On
(9:02) 4. Life Goes On: And Then One Day
(4:35) 5. Beautiful Telephones - Pt. 1
(6:13) 6. Beautiful Telephones - Pt. 2
(6:16) 7. Beautiful Telephones - Pt. 3
(5:29) 8. Copycat: After You
(0:17) 9. Copycat: Follow The Leader
(9:51) 10. Copycat: Copycat

The endless staircases of M.C. Escher’s castles don’t demand a soundtrack to be appreciated, but if you bask in Carla Bley’s “Copycat” while absorbing a few of the Dutch artist’s impossible labyrinths, you might be in for extra fun. One of Life Goes On’s three micro-suites, Bley’s piece arrives with a process mandate: Each line of the group’s performance should be an echo or variation of the preceding line. That leads to a wonderfully fluid symmetry. The choices pour forth, pensively at first, and then puckishly, as is often the esteemed composer’s wont. The fourth album in a quarter-century’s worth of collabs by the buoyant trio of the pianist, bassist Steve Swallow, and saxophonist Andy Sheppard, Life Goes On teems with the kind of balance that has marked their previous discs, but it also boasts an extra dose of eloquence.

Though I’m still citing the band’s masterpiece as 2013’s “Utviklingssang” (as finely cut a jewel as the MJQ’s “Django”), the level of detail at work on this latest disc is unmistakable. “Beautiful Telephones,” the pianist’s gibe at 45’s cluckish oogling over the Oval Office’s squawkbox, glows with the ominous tone of an étude penned by Bernard Herrmann. Bley knows we’re in deep shit these days, so her allusion to Chopin’s “Funeral March,” along with wry references to “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” “Yankee Doodle,” and other American chestnuts indicts us all for allowing Trumpian freedom to ring. As each passage inches forward, Sheppard’s concise moves match Swallow’s plush choices. The group’s chemistry is ultra-refined at this late date; the carefully calibrated sharing of duties brings a quizzical serenity to this improv-slanted chamber music.

Bley has told interviewers she’d like to be writing for a big band, but current economics demand a more scaled-down stance. No worries. The 81-year-old’s trademark humor still gets its moments in the sun. For example: “Copycat” ends a 15-minute-long parade of slippery tradeoffs with a curt three-note phrase that finds each musician in perfect accord. Same place, same time, at last. Feel free to put your grinning-face emoji right there.~ Jim Macnie https://jazztimes.com/reviews/albums/carla-bley-andy-sheppard-steve-swallow-life-goes-on-ecm/

Personel: Piano – Carla Bley; Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Andy Sheppard; Bass – Steve Swallow

Life Goes On

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Andy Sheppard - Live At Smash!

Styles: Guitar Jazz
Year: 2009
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:35
Size: 121,9 MB
Art: Front

(3:48)  1. Fallow Field
(4:07)  2. Farewell To Winter
(5:18)  3. Sea To Sky/Arrowhead
(3:09)  4. Dragonfly Helicopter
(4:23)  5. Soon To Be
(2:43)  6. Let It Go
(3:12)  7. The Best Day
(3:56)  8. King Mzi
(4:01)  9. I Like You
(3:37) 10. Ways & Means
(4:55) 11. Until Next Time
(4:14) 12. Love Apples
(5:06) 13. Feuilles-o

Oil and water. It's all about contrasts for Andy Sheppard. He coaxes brave new sounds from a converted '69 Martin steel guitar and a late-model laptop. He smashes folk and world music together with found sounds and stompbox loops. He sings out lyrics of a childhood in tobacco country and stirs them together with world-wandering stories from Africa and Asia. His latest live album (to be released November '08) is a slide guitar manifesto - by turns delicate and reckless, sweet but heavy on the beat. Songs tinged with the gentlemanly humour and global twang of Ry Cooder, and the sparkling desperation of Sufjan Stevens. Oil and water. Andy Sheppard won the 2006 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award. He was a finalist in the 2008 Mountain Stage NewSong Competition. He will be on tour in the UK and across Canada in 2008 with three other world-class guitarists as part of International Guitar Night. https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/sheppard4

"a strong but nuanced sense of pulse and a gift for lovely melodies" ~ Guitar Player Magazine

"a tremendous guitarist" ~ Matt Galloway - CBC Radio, Toronto.

"a mellifluous guitarist whose influences run the gamut from folk to blues to bluegrass, to sounds from Brazil, Africa, and the South Pacific" ~ John Kendle - Uptown Magazine, Winnipeg

"a masterful fingerstyle guitarist" ~ Whole Note Magazine

"a true instrumental virtuoso" ~ Jeff Robson - UMFM Radio, Winnipeg

"a jaw-droppingly great show - stunning solo work" ~ Dominic Lloyd - West End Cultural Centre, Winnipeg

Live At Smash!

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Andy Sheppard Quartet - Romaria

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2018
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 48:07
Size: 110,7 MB
Art: Front

(8:06)  1. And A Day ...
(4:48)  2. Thirteen
(5:11)  3. Romaria
(4:21)  4. Pop
(5:56)  5. They Came From The North
(5:53)  6. With Every Flower That Falls
(7:07)  7. All Becomes Again
(6:42)  8. Forever ...

Where so much music treats silence as an exception, Andy Sheppard's recordings find it serving more as the rule. He's never been one for weaving flashy speed runs or feeling pressure to fill space. Even when his sax lines speed up from time to time through Romaria, they serve the mood with tasteful restraint, smoothly evoking the soothing coolness of its cover. Sheppard uses the term "dream band" to describe this quartet, which is appropriate in more ways than one. Dreaminess is the overarching quality of the session and the group's longstanding familiarity lets them trust each other wherever they drift. Sheppard had already explored the chordless trio format with Michel Benita on bass and Sebastian Rochford at the drumkit; the guitar and electronic tones of sometime collaborator Eivind Aarset made an excellent expansion on Surrounded by Sea (ECM, 2015). Their followup here is just a touch more active in comparison, keeping their identity while turning one more facet toward the light. The opening "And a Day..." could serve as the start of a proper ambient album if it wished, full of wide breathing space and gentle sweeps of guitar swaying like waves at low tide. It's not long before Sheppard steps into livelier territory with the mid-tempo lines through "Thirteen," though the album's pace never feels anywhere near rushed. Again Aarset provides an atmospheric backing framework while the other players keep the pulse at the most languid of lulls. The rhythm section is often here to provide shading more than actual rhythm throughout; when the pieces ebb, they judiciously choose their spots with tasteful strums and splashes rather than any recognizable beat. The leader's pieces generally alternate between these two modes to refreshingly tranquil effect. 

The groove builds to a light-floating cruise during "Pop" and "All Becomes Again," then an actual clatter in between with "They Came from the North." Open air takes prominence for the meditative ballad "Every Flower That Falls" and the finale of "Forever..." (bookended with that opener because they were two complementary takes of the same piece). In either mode it's an atmosphere to soak in at leisure. This quartet's easy chemistry creates a pretty soundscape both inviting and intriguing, and Romaria never loses the airy feel of a cozy reverie even at its busiest. ~ Geno Tackara https://www.allaboutjazz.com/romaria-andy-sheppard-ecm-records-review-by-geno-thackara.php

Personnel: Andy Sheppard: tenor and soprano saxophones; Eivind Aarset: guitar; Michel Benita: double bass; Sebastian Rochford: drums.

Romaria

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Joanna MacGregor, Andy Sheppard - Deep River

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:56
Size: 116.6 MB
Styles: Easy Listening
Year: 2006/2015
Art: Front

[7:38] 1. Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
[4:40] 2. Everybody Help The Boys Come Home
[4:51] 3. Spiritual
[5:54] 4. Georgia Lee
[2:10] 5. Everybody Help The Boys Come Home (Remix)
[3:24] 6. Up Above My Head
[7:05] 7. Deep River
[2:33] 8. Up Above My Head (Remix)
[3:36] 9. Ring Them Bells
[5:25] 10. The Mercy Seat
[3:37] 11. Picture In A Frame

Joanna MacGregor, the pianist who injects free-jazz into Bach, applies the same intensity to Django Bates as Pierre Boulez, and has almost made John Cage's nuts and bolts standard piano currency, has gone back to her childhood for her latest venture, with jazz saxist Andy Sheppard. MacGregor was an evangelical church pianist before she emerged in the 1980s as one of the world's foremost modern-music recitalists, and for the project Deep River she has returned to the gospel songs and blues she first learned on the piano, more or less.

Goldfrapp's Will Gregory and the avant-jazz drummer Seb Rochford contribute to the Deep River CD this gig launched, but they only appeared in the background sounds in this single-set dialogue for MacGregor and Sheppard as a duo. Sheppard didn't know the songs before MacGregor initiated the project, and over the years the pianist has added a wealth of technical and expressive resources to the fundamentals she needed to play them as a child. So neither musician was disposed to play them as covers or museum pieces. That was evident from the opener, the classic Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.

MacGregor ushered it in with caressing piano chords, and Sheppard began with a high, fluting sound on the tenor sax, descending into dark whispers and noteless puffs of air. Then the pianist began rippling fast treble lines and a steadily boogieing left hand, so eventually the piece turned into a looping, Steve Reichian trance. A delicate soprano-sax line then unfurled over a banging bass-note, and a spinechilling multiphonic tenor wail erupted against a stomping gospel piano-walk on Josh Haden's haunting Spiritual, a song recorded by Johnny Cash. The two then explored a favourite MacGregor piece of Japanese minimalism and an ecstatic, fraught-with-danger Astor Piazzolla tango.

Tom Waits's Georgia Lee was a highlight, a tender soprano saxophone reverie over soft chords that relieved the repeating ostinato-hook feel that slightly overpowered the gig and occasionally cornered Sheppard. The saxophonist's bugged soprano, issuing a Joe Zawinul-like keyboard sound, was also a triumph, and Nick Cave's Mercy Seat (reflections on the electric chair) a terrifying free-blast. This freewheeling partnership, now over a decade old, shows no signs of repeating itself.

Deep River mc
Deep River zippy

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Andy Sheppard - Trio Libero

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:05
Size: 117.0 MB
Styles: Saxophone jazz
Year: 2012
Art: Front

[3:34] 1. Libertino
[3:36] 2. Slip Duty
[4:12] 3. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
[3:09] 4. Spacewalk (Pt. 1)
[4:17] 5. Dia Da Liberdade
[3:46] 6. Land Of Nod
[3:57] 7. The Unconditional Secret
[3:44] 8. Ishidatami
[6:09] 9. Skin Kaa
[3:43] 10. Spacewalk (Pt. 2)
[3:41] 11. Whereveryougoigotoo
[3:11] 12. Lots Of Stairs
[4:01] 13. When We Live On The Stars..

Andy Sheppard: tenor and soprano saxophones; Michel Benita: double bass; Sebastian Rochford: drums.

Sometimes unexpected connections yield the most wonderful results. Saxophonist Andy Sheppard, bassist Michel Benita and drummer Sebastian Rochford all have more than enough cred to suggest capability in any context, but none of their individual pursuits could presage a collaboration like Trio Libero, quite possibly the finest saxophone trio recordings of the new millennium, and one to rival previous ECM successes like bassist Dave Holland's Triplicate (1988) or saxophonist Jan Garbarek's Triptykon (1973). Trio Libero doesn't swing like Triplicate, nor does it possess the fiery free energy that so launched Garbarek's early career; instead, Trio Libero is an album of gentle freedom, spare but unfailing lyricism, and the kind of constant revelation that makes it a new experience with every listen.

With six of Trio Libero's thirteen tracks collectively credited, what's most special about the set is how it achieves that rarest of feats in free improvisation: true spontaneous composition—in-the-moment, yet possessed of a structure that belies inherent freedom and speaks to a deeper level of interaction. Sheppard's first release as a leader for ECM, 2009's Movements in Colour, was a more ambitious and preconceived affair; here, tracks such as the closing "When We Live On The Stars" possess immediate structure despite being credited to the trio, its folkloric melancholy coming from Sheppard's spare melodies, bolstered by Benita's utterly perfect choices and Rochford's deeply intuitive colors. There's no grandstanding here, only painstaking attention to the demands of the moment, though it's a certainty that in order to play music this selfless, all three players must possess tremendous command of their instruments.

Rochford, in particular, is a surprise and a delight. More extroverted in groups such as Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear, he's nevertheless proven himself contextually flexible. By no means imitative, but as a player more concerned with texture and implication, it's hard not to think of recent departee and ECM stalwart, drummer Paul Motian. If anything, Rochford is subtler still, his brushwork on a rubato look at Trio Libero's only cover, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," seeming tenuous at first—though never tentative—creating feather-light forward motion when connected with Sheppard's searching motifs and Benita's empathic foil. Sheppard's "Land of Nod" is more propulsive, opening with a drum solo as extroverted as Trio Libero gets, yet ever-gentle, even as Sheppard's melody line pulls on the waltz time to create delicate tension.

The two-part "Spacewalk" bookends five other tracks mid-way through the set, evoking a hovering stasis that develops almost imperceptibly, constructed over Benita's mix of arco and pizzicato, Rochford's cymbal swells and Sheppard's minimal tenor, which moves from low register to vibrato-laden high with unerring sense of purpose.

Rather than a demonstration of prowess, Trio Libero is proof that there's power in subtlety and drama in understatement—that tension can sometimes be found in the slightest of gestures. While time can only tell whether or not Trio Libero will actually achieve the status it deserves, Sheppard, Benita and Rochford have nevertheless created an album that stands apart from other saxophone trio recordings, a remarkable example of what happens when three masterful players check their egos at the door and surrender completely to the moment. ~John Kelman

Trio Libero mc
Trio Libero zippy

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Andy Sheppard - S/T

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 40:53
Size: 93.6 MB
Styles: Folk, Fingerstyle guitar
Year: 2006
Art: Front

[3:18] 1. Dragonfly Helicopter
[4:01] 2. King Mzi
[3:49] 3. Intimate Awkward
[3:48] 4. Beautiful Downtown Chicken
[4:17] 5. Until Next Time
[4:28] 6. Light Sweet Crude
[2:46] 7. Shadow Boxing
[4:09] 8. All Thumbs
[3:40] 9. Ways & Means
[2:14] 10. My Lovely Elizabeth
[4:20] 11. Feuilles-O

Oil and water. It's all about contrasts for Andy Sheppard. He coaxes brave new sounds from a converted '69 Martin steel guitar and a late-model laptop. He smashes folk and world music together with found sounds and stompbox loops. He sings out lyrics of a childhood in tobacco country and stirs them together with world-wandering stories from Africa and Asia. His latest live album (to be released October '08) is a slide guitar manifesto - by turns delicate and reckless, sweet but heavy on the beat. Songs tinged with the gentlemanly humour and global twang of Ry Cooder, and the sparkling desperation of Sufjan Stevens. Oil and water.

Andy Sheppard won the 2006 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award. He was a finalist in the 2008 Mountain Stage NewSong Competition. He toured in the UK and across Canada in 2008 with three other world-class guitarists as part of International Guitar Night.

Andy Sheppard zippy

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Rita Marcotulli, Andy Sheppard - On The Edge Of A Perfect Moment

Styles: Piano And Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2007
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 53:53
Size: 124,5 MB
Art: Front

(5:28)  1. Element
(8:03)  2. Les Mains D'Alice
(6:20)  3. Waves And Wind
(1:38)  4. Sound Of Stone I
(7:21)  5. Lullaby For Igor
(2:38)  6. Monkies Business
(4:04)  7. On The Edge Of A Perfect Moment
(5:37)  8. Us And Them
(5:50)  9. Carnival
(1:42) 10. Sound Of Stone II
(5:09) 11. Rabo De Nube

Italian pianist Marcotulli's duets with British saxophonist Sheppard have been discreet gems which, in recent years, have occasionally been seen glittering around the jazz scene, and this set is a more faithful representation of that intimacy than the pair's more eclectic album, Koine, released four years ago. Marcotulli has lived in Scandinavia, and the ghostly, wistful long-note jazz of Jan Garbarek, Arve Henriksen and others has had an impact here. Sheppard's tone control and ability to do more with less has been an eloquent feature of his mid-life music, but a startling edginess often bursts out of it, in fierce split-notes or rumbling, upward-spiralling runs against slowly swaying piano figures. Waves and Wind appoints the piano (in Marcotulli's Jarrett-like incarnation) and the saxophone to play each role respectively, and Sound of Stone is an abstract wriggle through soprano figures and skittering percussion. Lullaby for Igor is like a slow townships dance, while Pink Floyd's Us and Them is a reverie that imperceptibly gathers momentum, and Carnival a driving tango. The result is a real contemporary improvised dialogue, on very good original material. ~ John Fordham  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/may/11/jazz.shopping

Personnel:  Piano, Liner Notes – Rita Marcotulli;  Saxophone – Andy Sheppard

On The Edge Of A Perfect Moment

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Andy Sheppard Quartet - Surrounded By Sea

Styles: Saxophone Jazz
Year: 2015
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 53:25
Size: 123,4 MB
Art: Front

(6:16)  1. Tipping Point
(5:15)  2. I Want to Vanish
(4:17)  3. Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Pt. 1
(5:06)  4. Origin of Species
(5:09)  5. They Aren't Perfect and Neither Am I
(5:02)  6. Medication
(1:14)  7. Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Pt. 2
(6:18)  8. The Impossibility of Silence
(3:48)  9. I See Your Eyes Before Me
(4:18) 10. A Letter
(3:29) 11. Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir, Pt. 3
(3:09) 12. Looking for Ornette

Saxophonist/composer Andy Sheppard has found a home in ECM. It's maybe not the perfect home for an artist as eclectic as Sheppard, for it's hard to see some of his other projects notably the Scofield/Lovanoesque quartet Hotel Bristol fitting in with the ECM aesthetic. Still, Sheppard's melodic improvisational approach and the airy lyricism on Movements in Color (ECM, 2009) and Trio Libero (ECM, 2012) fitted the ECM blueprint beautifully and rank among his most seductive recordings. With Surrounded by Sea Sheppard expands the sonic palette of Trio Libero with the addition of guitarist/electronics musician Eivind Aarset, whose ambient craft adds profundity and simmering edge to the prevailing undertstaed lyricism. Surrounded by Sea trades some of Trio Libero's rubato grace for greater harmonic layers and rhythmic dynamics; on the stunning opener "Tipping Point," Michel Benita's deep bass ostinato and Sebastian Rochford's skipping grooves drive Sheppard's tenor siren, while Aarset's embedded drone and softly voiced, washing six-string textures add atmospheric ambient textures. Sheppard's trademark soprano melodicism is to the fore on Elvis Costello's "I Want to Vanish," a lulling ballad of folkloric charm where Rochford's brushes sigh like waves on a pebble beach.

Folk music has colored most of Sheppards' recorded output over the years and here the quartet addresses "Aoidh, Na Dean Cadal Idir," a traditional Scottish song. The tune blossomed into a twenty-minute improvisation in the studio, was subsequently pruned and woven through the album in three parts, conferring a suite-like continuity on the whole. Hauntingly atmospheric and abundantly lyrical, Sheppard's yearning soprano is lent buoyancy by the loose grooves on the first and third parts. Part two is a fleeting vignette whose feathery lyricism dissipates and vanishes like the lightest of breezes briefly felt. More of this improvised/studio-sculpted mini-suite embedded throughout the album wouldn't have gone amiss. 

Gentle eddies of bass and tenor saxophone color the poetic "Origin of the Species," with Aarset's orchestral waves subtly infusing the narrative; Rochford's presence is ghostly sensed rather than heard. A similar aesthetic imbues "The Impossibility of Silence," with brushes more prominent. Fractured rhythms and echoing guitar plot the course on "They Aren't Perfect and Neither Am I," a brooding quartet tale where sketchy composed lines and measured improvisation dovetail easily. The low-rumbling intensity of the intro to "I See Your Eyes before Me" gives way to Sheppard's tenor lead, searching and ruminative in turn. The simple architecture of the dreamy waltz "A Letter" foregrounds Sheppard's beautiful weighted soprano lines.

Sheppard revisits older material on the hypnotic "Medication," previously interpreted with the Bergen Big Band; Aarset shadows Sheppard's defining melody closely before the saxophonist peels away over Rochford's light, yet propulsive groove. On "Looking for Ornette," Sheppard is drawn once more to explore the nuances of his Ornette Coleman-inspired piece that appeared on Dancing Man and Woman (Provocateur Records, 2000), closing this album in quietly celebratory mode. Surrounded by Sea is an intimate statement whose chemistry belies the quartet's brief existence. There's a bold honesty in the music's refined contours and graceful adventure that invites and rewards the patient listener. There's the feeling too, that this quartet has plenty more to offer. 

~ Ian Patterson http://www.allaboutjazz.com/surrounded-by-sea-andy-sheppard-quartet-ecm-records-review-by-ian-patterson.php

Personnel: Andy Sheppard, tenor & soprano saxophones; Seb Rochford: drums, percussion; Eivind Aarset: electric guitars, electronics; Michel Benita: bass.

Surrounded By Sea

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Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard & Steve Swallow - Trios

Styles: Piano Jazz
Year: 2013
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 56:17
Size: 129,0 MB
Art: Front

( 7:55)  1. Utviklingssang
( 7:22)  2. Vashkar
(14:59)  3. Les Trois Lagons (D'apres Henri Matisse): Plate XVIi - Plate XVIII - Plate XIX
(11:34)  4. Wildlife
(14:24)  5. The Girl Who Cried Champagne: Pt. 1, 2, 3

In a career more defined by memorable compositions than instrumental acumen, it's easy to forget that Carla Bley may not be the most virtuosic pianist on the planet, but she's a far more than capable one, as evidenced on duo recordings like Are We There Yet? (Watt, 1999), with life partner/bassist Steve Swallow, and Songs With Legs (WATT, 1995), a trio date with longtime collaborator, saxophonist Andy Sheppard also heard in Bley's larger ensemble of Appearing Nightly (Watt/ECM, 2008) and quartet session, The Lost Chords (Watt/ECM, 2004). On Swallow's recent Into the Woodwork (XtraWATT/ECM, 2013), Bley proved a clever, quirky and comedic organist; with Trios an album that, perhaps for the first time ever, features absolutely no new compositions Bley reunites the Songs With Legs trio, refocusing attention on her thoughtful, precise piano work. That's not to suggest there isn't still a clever compositional mind at work in these fresh, intimate arrangements of music ranging from Bley's elegiac "Utviklingssang," her most-recorded ballad that first appeared on Social Studies (Watt, 1981), to lesser-known but still previously recorded suites including "The Girl Who Cried Champagne," from the aptly titled Sextet (Watt, 1987) and "Wildlife," heard for the first time on the larger ensemble session Night-Glo (Watt, 1986). Only the dark-hued "Vashkar" one of Bley's most well-known tunes, having appeared on Tony Williams' fusion classic Lifetime (Polydor, 1969) and, most recently, on John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana's Invitation to Illumination: Live at Montreux 2011 (Eagle Vision, 2013) is played on record by Bley for the first time. 

Driven by Swallow's superb time all the more essential to a group's without a drummer Bley's reading of "Vashkar" opens with the pair exploring its mid-eastern modality for a full ninety second before Sheppard comes in, on soprano, to double its memorable yet quirky melody with Bley's right hand. Sheppard's star has been on the ascendancy for years, but most recently on the superb Trio Libre (ECM, 2012), his second recording as a leader for the label. Here, he demonstrates the same kind of care-ridden patience, his solo reflecting a trio whose ears are wide open, meticulously responding to each others' every move. Even as they adhere to the song's form, there's the sense that were this to be immediately followed by another take, it would be an entirely different experience. 

Swallow introduces "Utviklingssang" alone, its haunting melody soon joined by Bley, whose thoughtful introduction of a contrapuntal theme and spartan supporting chords yield to sparer accompaniment still when Sheppard finally enters. While time is something to which the trio adheres carefully when required Swallow's inimitable swing fundamental to the first section of "Les Trois Lagons (d'après Henri Matisse)" Trios' ultimate beauty is in the interpretive nuances that allow time to be ever-so-slightly pliant subtly stretched and compressed to imbue these five pieces with their own personalities. The balance of the program consists of longer, multipart compositions, but remains underscored by the same attention to detail. 

Without muss or fuss, Bley, Swallow and Sheppard have, with Trios, created that most perfect of chamber records, filled with shrewd surprises and a delicate dramaturgy that reveals itself further with each and every listen. ~ John Kelman   http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/profile.php?id=398

Personnel: Carla Bley: piano; Andy Sheppard: tenor and soprano saxophones; Steve Swallow: bass.

Trios

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