Russian pianist Simon Nabatov and his trio began a short Irish tour with a concert in TCD last week which was as remarkable for its sense of adventure as it was for the dazzling virtuosity with which it was expressed. Sharing the explorations with him were two equally unfettered jazz musicians, bassist Drew Gress and the extraordinary drummer Tom Rainey, one of the most musical and original talents I've ever heard on percussion.
Together they produced trio work of quite remarkable unity of purpose and mutual sensitivity. Unusual time signatures - hardly anything was in straight 4/4 - changes of tempo, episodes of free playing, an attitude towards the production of sound and effects that sought to incorporate everything possible into the musical discourse, and a willingness to run the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic permutations on the basic material, sometimes escaping from it completely, were marks of this trio of outstanding musicians and their work.
However, out of the concert, only John Coltrane's Giant Steps was not composed by Nabatov, and the difficulty of absorbing such a body of original material and grasping the detail of their improvised handling of it at one sitting is considerable. Perhaps because of this - and with ears more accustomed to their musical world - the second set yielded the more accessible performances, notably an exhilaratingly controlled Groove Time, some exquisite moments on Margareta, a piece inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov's extraordinary novel, The Master and Margareta, and For Herbie, written to honour a neglected great piano talent, the late Herbie Nicholls.
That piece, in fact, underlined another aspect of their work. So superbly integrated is this trio that it's almost impossible, at times, to determine how much is written and arranged, how much improvised, or how much is simply mutual discoveries made from working together, developed as routines and initiated by agreed cues to create a focal point or signal a change of approach. Overall, however, it's music which excites admiration and respect for this superb trio more than anything else.