With bassist Matt Penman and drummer Ari Hoenig. Highlights among the covers include the iridescent version of Miles Davis Kind of Blue classic ‘Flamenco Sketches.’
This is a studio album recorded at Power Station Berklee in New York City over three days of mid-May last year. The sound rings out clear as a bell.
Interesting the choice of taking the Jerome Moross melody of 1950s song ‘Lazy Afternoon’ for a spin. While very familiar as a vocal it isn’t so much as an instrumental. Larry Willis did a nice version on his 2011 solo piano album This Time’s The Dream On Me. But Childs is a very different pianist certainly in the weight of his chords and the triplet accents he dwells on. You can’t really compare the two.
What Childs does is more laidback and you almost feel the comfort he feels and knowledge he brings when he plays Thelonious Monk’s ‘Ask Me Now.’
Is this album as good as Childs’ The Winds of Change? To answer that you need to look at the originals some of which go way back to earlier precincts of Childs’ career.
Born on 8 March 1958 in Los Angeles, Childs began performing professionally while he was still a teenager and later honed his craft at the University of Southern California where he earned a degree in composition.
Childs has won five Grammy Awards and has performed with Yo-Yo Ma and Sting. He was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009 for his significant contributions to the arts.
‘Heroes’ is strong, ‘Like Father Like Son’ where there’s memorable bass soloing from James Farm ace Penman even better. Childs takes all the time in the world setting up ‘Carefree’ with big chords interspersed by battering toms and brushes from Hoenig. It proves fun.
This is not a doomy album. So if that – fellow miserabilist – is what you want: it’s not here!
But don’t hold that against Trumvirate because it isn’t superficial either.
To be frank much as the trio ticks like a well maintained vintage clock it’s the piano playing I want to hear, less the piano trio as a unit.
There’s a pace to opener ‘One Fleeting Instant’ – the clue to the frenetic tempo is in “fleeting” – again another Childs original. Childs’ knack is to make an affinity for 1950s jazz sound hip and very much agenda setting for where we are in 2026 and I don’t mean we all hark back to wanting to be in the 50s. Far from it.
‘One Fleeting Instant’ appeared in a punchy, even faster but not at all furious, version on Childs’ 1980s era album Take For Example This.
‘Like Father Like Son’ with its slight feel of rubato in the bass line exists in an earlier version again going back to the 1980s found on Twilight Is Upon Us.
Another decent question is worth asking: is this trio as potent as Childs’ with Buster Williams and Carl Allen heard on late 90s album Skim Coat? Hmmm, the jury is out on that one. The tune to make a direct comparison with there is the new treatment of ‘Heroes’.
– Top stuff: See the marlbank best of the year list to date for mention of Triumvirate and more.
MORE READING
- The Winds of Change review (2023)
- Acceptance (2020) review
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