Trio 3D, Remi Alvarez, Joe Fonda, Harvey Sorgen

Tenorist Remi Alvarez is Mexico's secret weapon. No, not in some military sense. If there are such things as cultural wars, then Remi is Mexico's avant jazz equalizer. Well of course avant jazz doesn't have much bearing on international politics, but my point is that Remi Alvarez is a formidable player.

He has a slightly dark tone a la Sam Rivers, and he is very inventive. His work on the recent Trio 3D (Konnex 5286) is some of his very best. He is in excellent company with Joe Fonda at the Bass and Harvey Sorgen on drums. They run through twelve varied three-way collective improvisations in the course of the album, with everybody on top of it and working together very well.

But it's Remi Alvarez that especially shines here. He is a tenor for today and this is one of his very best performances on disk, so you need to catch it if you can. And this trio is a hum-dinger.

FAS Trio, "Chimeco"

The FAS Trio is a heady blend of sax-bass-drums. Their album Chimeco (Discos Intolerancia) showcases a major free outing by the group. They are Mexico-based for the most part. Remi Alvarez is the tenorist, David Sanchez is the contrabassist and Jorge Fernandez takes on the drums.

And the result is some fine improvising. Remi Alvarez has a strong tone. In his own way he takes to heart Sam Rivers' challenge for players to develop their own phrasings, their own way. He does. There is strong work from Mr. Alvarez from start to finish, in an expanded tonal mode. Mr. Sanchez's contrabass and Mr. Fernandez's drums are right there with him in a three-way expression that hangs together as a cohesive, freely improvised whole.

The set has energy, poise and melodic movement of an inspired sort. You can grab the album on i tunes. And if you are a free-thing enthusiast, you will want to! Recommended. Otra vez!