CD ECM Records Craig Taborn Trio: Chants

2012

Craig Taborn - pian
Thomas Morgan - contrabas
Gerald Cleaver - tobe

Recently hailed by Down Beat as “one of the visionaries of the current wave”, Craig Taborn has a unique perspective on creative music-making. Just as “Avenging Angel” subverted expectations of solo improvised piano, so does “Chants” find its own response to the vast tradition of the piano trio. The pieces that Taborn has been writing for the band in the eight years of its existence are set up to generate a new group music by channelling the special skills of drummer Gerald Cleaver and bassist Thomas Morgan. “I knew that if I created a context and then deferred, fully, to Gerald’s and Thomas’s sensibilities it would inherently be stimulating and would also challenge the context. I wanted to invite that challenge: I’d much rather engage with the group, always, than have the format be ‘piano adventures with supporting cast’”. Morgan and Cleaver share the leader’s concern for compositional shape and multi-layered improvisational detail, as the music is pulled between the poles of density and spaciousness, to dramatic and thrilling effect. “Chants” was recorded in New York in June 2012, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

‘Chants’ [...] is the extraordinary new record by Craig Taborn, a pianist of cryptic insights and galactic interests. It’s an acoustic piano trio album with Thomas Morgan on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums, and at times it can evoke other abstract rhapsodists in that format, like Paul Bley. But ‘Chants’ is also a product of alert indeterminacy: it lands on a recognizable style the way a dragonfly alights on a reed. You might hear the shadow influence of second-wave Detroit techno on ‘Speak The Name’ and ‘Beat The Ground’ in their assymetrical pulse patterns – but you don’t notice any insistence behind the allusion. Likewise with flickers of Duke Ellington (‘Silver Days or Love’) and Herbie Nichols (‘Hot Blood’). Mr. Taborn, 43, has worked far more extensively in other people’s bands than with his own: he isn’t in a hurry. But the album, recorded a couple of months after his trio’s Village Vanguard debut last year, confirms his standing as an inspired bandleader-composer, one of the smartest and slipperiest in his peer group.
Nate Chinen, The New York Times

The songs on Craig Taborn Trio’s latest CD, ‘Chants’, have titles, but they don’t have borders, or ordinary structures, or typical narrative flow. The songs are positively shimmering, immaculately detailed, prismatic and very improvisational. But they don’t live quickly or land easily; they flutter and spiral, bend and float, and constantly surprise. [...] You hear strains of Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley’s rambles and Paul Motian’s trios, even the urgency and repetition of some electronic music, but ‘Chant’ is original to its core. And lovely as in the lulaby like stillness of ‘In Chant’ Taborn’s stately, sad acoustic piano lines wrapping around double bassist Thomas Morgan’s lyrical lines and Gerald Cleaver’s sizzling brush strokes.
Ken Micallef, Downbeat

…this is consistently powerful, dense music, packed with dynamic and textural contrasts, performed by three mutually sensitive individuals who all subscribe to Taborn’s succinctly expressed philosophy: ‘If there’s a question, it’s because you intended there to be a question, and the improvisation is the answer.’
Chris Parker, London Jazz

Although the trio has been in existence for some eight years in total, this is actually the first recording by the trio in New York and it is an all original set. If at times the structures are quite complex and dense and not immediately acceesible, there is nonethless a warm intimacy to the album as a whole that bodes well for the future and this is exemplified on the opener ‘Saints’ which has a lovely crispness to the drum beats. An irresistably catchy and repetitive piano vamp on ‘Beat the ground’ builds into a Bach-like groove and this is performed at a fast pace throughout. For an example of fine piano trio interplay, the highly rhythmic pattern of ‘Hot blood’ stands out where piano and drums create a collective riff. Where the trio really excel is on the ballads such as ‘In chant’ and on this gentle number the duet intro then affords bassist Morgan to focus on a solo while Taborn delicately comps. The piece has a slightly menacing edge to it and yet succeeds in being strangely reposing at the same time. Cleaver shines with some nifty brush work on the minimalist number ‘Cracking hearts’.
Tim Stenhouse, UK Vibe

Yes, yes and thrice yes. That’s one for each member of this trio and also three times for how emphatically this release will make my end of year list. For anyone who thinks – justifiably in this reviewer’s opinion – that the piano/bass/drums trio has reached saturation point in recorded terms this set is a reminder of how vital it can be. Throughout his career Taborn’s avoided the obvious.Comparing his work on this set with his playing in Farmers by Nature, a trio consisting of himself and Cleaver with bassist William Parker, reveals a multi-faceted musician. [...] This is not however the kind of set to appeal to those who take pleasure only in the reiteration of past glories, for the music has a contemporary air even while it’s an outcome of a rich heritage.
Nic Jones, Jazz Journal

Perhaps the most versatile, mercurial pianist in jazz, Craig Taborn delivers another stunning statement. He's led his fantastic trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver since 2007, and you can hear that shared history in how thoroughly Taborn and his bandmates seem to have internalized the material on Chants. His shape-shifting compositions add to the fluid complexity of the songs—despite their many interlocking parts, they never feel halting or mechanical, and their constant destabilizing motion is offset by meticulous construction that allows each player great improvisational latitude.
Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader