Latest CD releases reviewed

BILL MAYS
Live At Jazz Standard Palmetto
*****

In what is possibly his finest album yet, pianist Mays engages with Martin Wind (bass) and Matt Wilson (drums) for a creative, vibrant live trio exploration of a mix of standards and originals. It's a working group of refreshingly open, highly skilled players - only one such could take the astonishing liberties taken here with the likes of Darn That Dream and Willow Weep For Me; and marry freedom with structure and maintain a fruitful tension over a relaxed, straight-ahead groove on Squeeze Me and the delightful Have You Met Miss Jones. Mays's originals are striking, too, especially the melancholy beauty of Euterpe, so delicately massaged by this exceptional trio. Throughout, whether playing inside or outside the envelope, the trio's level of imaginative interplay is breathtaking. www.palmetto-records.com

Ray Comiskey

BRIAN LYNCH
24/07/2005 Nagel Heyer
****

Trumpeter Brian Lynch is in coruscating form on what is a summation of the work of his current group with Rick Germanson (piano), Hans Glawischnig (bass) and Neal Smith (drums); although Miguel Zenon solos on three tracks, it's in essence a quartet album. Effectively, the idiom is hard bop with post-bop touches and Lynch revels not only in the scope it provides, but also in the stimulation offered by the splendid Germanson and the rhythm section. That he can play so distinctively on pieces as diverse as West End Blues, By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Ellington's Azalea, or originals such as Germanson's Game Theory and, notably, Glawischnig's fine Beholding, speaks volumes for the strength of his musical personality and the quality of his colleagues. www.musicconnection.org.uk

Ray Comiskey

BAROQUE JAZZ TRIO
(Same Name) Harmonia Mundi
**

The Baroque Jazz Trio - Jean-Charles Capon (cello), George Rabol (harpsichord/piano) and Philipe Combelle (drums/tabla) - were an early 1970s avant garde French group, whose only LP, now reissued on CD, reveals an enthusiastic embrace of musical multiculturalism in pursuit of something new. Despite a mix that includes Indian, Brazilian, Chinese, classical, American pop, free and straight-ahead jazz elements, the results seem to have more rhythmic than linear interest, and rather more energy than invention. With manner triumphing over substance, perhaps the multiculturalism was grasped for the same reason that people climb Everest: because it was there. www.harmoniamundi.com

Ray Comiskey