Latest CD releases reviewed

KEITH JARRETT
Radiance ECM
*****

Recorded at two concerts in Japan in 2002, this double is Jarrett's first solo piano release in a decade. It's been worth the wait. Although the music is completely improvised, there is much that is surprisingly songlike amid the inevitable, jagged abstractions arising from the spontaneity deliberately courted here. And contrast is one of the dynamics running through these concerts. For every ingratiatingly lyrical piece - and Parts 2, 3, 6, 8-10, 13 and the Bach-like 15 are particularly beautiful examples of Jarrett's ability to set moods from the elegaic and the gently melancholic to the tranquil and celebratory - there are performances like the brilliant and dramatic Part 5 or the questing Part 14 to set them off. The results season a richly varied fare with accessibility and sustenance. www.musicconnection.org.uk

Ray Comiskey

MULGREW MILLER
Live at Yoshi's Volume Two Maxjazz
****

Pianist Miller's trio, with bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Karriem Riggins, was playing with such controlled abandon at San Francisco's Yoshi's that another live recording from the engagement was a foregone conclusion. To hear them surge unconcernedly through the changes of pace on Victor Feldman's Joshua, groove exhilaratingly on James Williams's bluesy Road Life, strike a tempo that seems utterly right on a standard like Comes Love, or impose a lithe, joyous mood on Little Girl Blue and make it fit, is to hear a working group on form. Straight-ahead swinging is their thing, but it doesn't preclude pushing the edges a bit; Miller's One's Own Room is their most adventurous outing here, while Tony Williams's Citadel also lightly brushes the boundaries. www.maxjazz.com

Ray Comiskey

PATRICK ZIMMERLI
Phoenix Songlines
***

Zimmerli is a gifted composer whose previous Songlines release, The Book of Hours, produced immensely satisfying and original jazz. He feels his latest, an attempt to marry classical, jazz and pop elements, using a string quartet, piano, percussion, sampling, electronics, soprano saxophone and multitracking, is his most mature work yet. It's attractive, interesting and beautifully played, but ultimately the justification for the music - "experimental" - dilutes its impact, as if the intellectual reasons for its existence were more compelling than the musical ones. For instance, How Insensitive, the only non-Zimmerli piece here, is given a very careful, straight rendering on soprano by the leader, who sees this as going sufficiently against the grain of personal reading to be termed experimentation. www.songlines.com

Ray Comiskey