Michael McNeill Trio, Flight

Pianist-composer Michael McNeill has been busy as an important member of the Buffalo music scene for a number of years. He also leads a very potent trio with Ken Filiano on bass and Phil Haynes on drums. They put out an album, Passageways, in 2011, and now they are back with Flight (self-released).

Based on the new one, I am sorry to have missed the first. This one is filled with ultra-modern trio jazz that has gritty, pointed, harmonically advanced qualities in a post-Corean sort of way (in the classic trio era), and a bit of early Jarrett and classic Herbie rechanneled, a beautifully swinging-free Filiano and Haynes and some striking piano "blowing."

Phil Haynes gives us his very smart drumming in abundance and Ken Filiano is ideal for what he does as well as how it fits. Both solo nicely, too!

Ultimately, though, it is McNeill's compositions and concepts, his pianistic advance that completely carries the day. It goes from adventurous new music ruminations to wildly swinging postbop and as it does, it seals the music with a irreplaceable fingerprint.

This is the sort of music that reminds us, as we are in the thick of mechanical and now digital reproduction, that the art of jazz resists homogenization, standardization and cloning in the best examples. For piano trios, the McNeill outfit as heard on the new album is one-of-a-kind, enormously talented and pushing the boundaries of the art in the best ways.

I am very happy to have this one! I think you'd be, too. Check it out.

Connie Crothers Quartet, Deep Friendship

Connie Crothers has been making seminal new/avant jazz for many decades. And there is no excuse if she doesn't always get the recognition in the press she so deserves. It's all laid out in the recordings and you can catch her live in and around the city (New York).

She has a new album out that, after some quite exciting and engaging duets with some brilliant players, returns to her classic quartet. They played a set at the Jazz Room, William Paterson University in NJ, in 2010. Fortunately it was well recorded and the results are for us to appreciate in Deep Friendship (New Artists 1058).

This is the band best known for its freebop demeanor. That means that the music is outside the mainstream but has deep bop roots. Long-time Crothers associate Richard Tabnik blazes on alto sax. Even longer-time band member Roger Mancuso plays a loosely swinging set of drums. And Ken Filiano, a bassist known and appreciated for his work with Connie and others as well, is a key part as he has been for a while.

So why is this something to hear? It's some intricately hip after-bop numbers--three by Connie and two by Richard. They have been done before on earlier albums, but that in jazz just means they are serving as the springboard for a fresh improvisatory outlook, which is as true of this group as it is of any.

Richard blazes as a relative of Bird who has built his own nest--in other words, post-Bird. Ken walks beautifully and plays some excellent solos, too. Roger kicks out the jams both in time and in solo.

But I find myself on this album especially listening to what Connie is doing. When she comps the harmonies are thickened, sometimes to the point that they are flat-out clusters of dissonance and then, no, you get your bearings with some very rootsy chordal voicings and all in a flow that shows the deep, deep roots she has in the tradition but how much she pushes that tradition to the edge. That is what good freebop should do but often doesn't quite. With Ms. Crothers and the band they do so without fail. And Connie's solos show that too only perhaps even more so.

No one plays like this out there except Connie. Others may get in that zone but she is way ahead of them all when it comes to extensions and transformations of what has gone before.

Everything clicks on Deep Friendship. Connie shows us that she is at the top of the game. So do yourself a favor and dig in to this one! My highest recommendation for this one--and Matthew Shipp's from the other day. For the piano these are two sides to a brilliant coin. Years from now people are going to be kicking themselves saying, "why didn't I get with this music sooner?" Now is the time.

TranceFormation, In Concert, Andrea Wolper, Connie Crothers, Ken Filiano

It takes musicians of real imagination and ability to launch music involving 100% improvisation and have it satisfy the listener on every level. Of course with an artist of the stature of pianist-conceptualist Connie Crothers, you know you are going to get that along with her extraordinary originality and pianism. With contrabassist Ken Filiano, the same applies. I'll admit that vocalist and prose-poetess Andrea Wolper was an unknown factor for me.

So when I opened the package that contained the three artists together on the CD TranceFormation in Concert (New Artists 1054CD) I wasn't quite sure what it would be like.

Now that I've listened a bunch of times I am happy to say that the CD made a Wolper believer out of me. She improvises recitations, creates rhythmic patter that hangs together as content as well as sound pattern, and she sings and does sound color vocalisms that sound right and show a very inventive creative soul at work.

Combine Andrea with Connie and Ken, and something special results. That's In Concert. It's Ms. Wolpers, Ms. Crothers and Mr. Filiano at their creative best. And it shows you in the process that "jazz vocals" can be whatever they might be and be very good, without resorting to the usual standards and scatting formations so prevalent these days.

That's the case, and on top of that you have a very wonderful three-way interaction at work here. Inspiring improvisation at its best!

Vinny Golia Quartet, Take Your Time

Vinny Golia has for 30 years give-or-take created vibrant uncompromising jazz that bears his distinctive waterprint. That he is very much alive and well is quite apparent on the 2007 recording just now coming out: Take Your Time (Relative Pitch 1003).

It's a quartet of fine players--Vinny on tenor, alto and soprano, Bobby Bradford on cornet, Ken Filano on bass, and Alex Cline on drums.

This one is remarkable for the Golia-Bradford interactions, the interaction of the two with Cline and Filiano, and the latter with themselves.

It is an appealing straightforwardly "new thing" date, with heads and plenty of space for the soloists. Bradford sounds his effective self; Vinny moves to his own inner voice, original all the way, and the Filiano-Cline combination catapults the music ever upwards.

Is this album a huge revelation and the best thing Maestro Golia has ever done? No. But it IS an excellently realized, unpretentious meeting of four accomplished improvisational masters, who by being themselves, by playing with soul and fire, by their candor and concentration, give you a lively set of new jazz.

And that's what it is all about. Part of it anyway.