Apart from work by Paul Cornish – on both his own trio record and with Joshua Redman – plus earlier in the year new recordings from GoGo Penguin and Sultan Stevenson, it’s been a poor year for the art of the piano trio certainly in terms of quantity. The highly versatile format is in a period of transition and no one can possibly know who the next innovator will be.
I’m a big believer in cycles and serendipity. So this year there have been lots of great sax albums, an upsurge in quality releases on the Irish scene and further explorations in jazztronica and spiritual jazz that make sense. It’s not been such a great year for vibes-led records and the harp fad has passed although there are still some great flickers out there from that regard.
What isn’t so strong – and writing this the chances are the wheel will turn and next year or the following year may see an increase in activity in this area – is the progressive strength in the artistic development of the art of the piano trio.
Cast your minds not too far back and some of these artists are still active even if their focus has changed and it’s not so long ago inspired by the acclaim and in the wake of the achievements of e.s.t that Brad Mehldau, The Bad Plus, Jason Moran’s Bandwagon, the first Vijay Iyer trio and Robert Glasper’s trio and many more became the state of the art. The piano trio had a new focus – it often brought in pop and rock standards rather than Great American Songbook standards – it sounded more future proofed for the 21st century and suddenly a staple format known for classic work by Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and more was if not reborn sounding very different and very valid indeed.
This year only Go Go Penguin – an electronica , ambient and drum ‘n’ bass inspired trio from Manchester (although their album has additional elements beyond the core trio) and fellow Brit London pianist Sultan Stevenson (again adding extra instruments to his core trio) and Joshua Redman’s pianist Paul Cornish and his trio have really excited me. All are highly contrastive – while Go Go Penguin pianist Chris Illingworth was influenced in the past by Esbjörn Svensson he’s very much also influenced by Aphex Twin and a whole lot of dance music as well, Stevenson cleaves more to influences like McCoy Tyner and Mulgrew Miller. He’s not so interested in overdubs or extensive post production on his albums or for that matter light shows at his gigs. You could say he is more in the great acoustic tradition of the music while GoGo Penguin follow more of a hybrid, customised often ‘non jazz’ route that to a non aligned music fan is understandable if that fan happened to attend a lot of rock or dance gigs held in cavernous arena type spaces rather than the typical and very different small jazz club setting. Both work extremely well. Cornish meanwhile may be the kind of player Robert Glasper fans have been hoping and dreaming would come along in his wake.
But these releases are outliers and few other piano trios have really stood out this year although of course there are lots of worthy renditions of classic material interpreted with love and affection out there. How does an artist breath new life into an old formula? It’s hopeless to think about reinventing the wheel. For now the piano trio is more in a period of transition.
