Harris Eisenstadt September Trio, The Destructive Element

For my money Harris Eisenstadt is a key composer, drummer and bandleader on the new jazz scene today. Happily there have been a good number of recordings to document his music, and today we have another fine one.

Harris joins together with two beautiful players in his September Trio for the disk The Destructive Element (Clean Feed 276) in a program of Eisenstadt compositions. They are place setters sometimes for some excellent improvisations--yet have a memorable quality either way for the best of the new. In Angelica Sanchez and Ellery Eskelin, piano and tenor, respectively, Harris has chosen well. Angelica may not be a household name as yet but she impresses strongly here as elsewhere as a pianist who can get inside a tonality and take it to farther reaches when it seems right, all with her own way of going about it. Of course Ellery Eskelin is a monster artist, someone who keeps turning in great performances and remains a fresh voice, an evergreen so to speak.

The program goes from strength to strength as composition and artist meld into what is a most creatively probing series of chapters in a seriously absorbing "book" of music. My system is crashing this morning continually so I must cut this a bit short and check my virus software!

The Destructive Element is to me one of the minor masterpiece of this year thus far, eminently worth your time.