CD ECM Records Gary Peacock Trio: Tangents

2017

Gary Peacock - contrabas
Marc Copland - pian
Joey Baron - tobe

Some of Gary Peacock’s finest music has been made in piano trios. Early in his musical life, Peacock established a fresh role for the bass as an independent melodic voice, a concept carried forward in the history-making groups he’s played with – from Paul Bley’s Bill Evans’s trios to Keith Jarrett’s. As a bandleader he has also been influential: Tangents is the second release from the great bassist’s trio with Marc Copland and Joey Baron and draws on years of shared playing in diverse contexts. All three band members contribute compositions, Peacock’s including “December Greenwings”, revisiting a piece Gary introduced on his ECM recording December Poems. Repertoire includes five tunes from Peacock, two from Baron, one from Copland, and an outstanding group improvisation, “Empty Forest”. The trio also plays Miles Davis’s “Blue In Green” and, perhaps surprisingly, Alex North’s theme for the film Spartacus, which also proves a fine vehicle for improvising. Tangents was recorded in Lugano in May 2016, and produced by Manfred Eicher.

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As a bassist, Gary Peacock has always been a stealth virtuoso. What he plays often requires phenomenal speed and facility, but the power and originality of his music invariably draw the listener’s attention away from Peacock’s technical prowess. Even though it opens with a remarkable solo statement that stretches from thumb position down to the lowest reaches of the fingerboard, ‘Tangents’ is unlikely to change that notion. […] the group’s defining character remains the all-in equality of its interplay, maintaining a creative balance between piano, bass and drums regardless sof whether the music is conventionally structured, like Miles Davis’’Blue In Green’, or as open-ended as Peacock’s title tune.
J.D. Considine, Downbeat

A set of mostly Peacock compositions – with Alex North’s love theme from ‘Spartacus’ and Miles Davis’s classic ‘Blue in Green’A set of mostly Peacock compositions – with Alex North’s love theme from ‘Spartacus’ and Miles Davis’s classic ‘Blue in Green’ thrown in for good measure – veers from ruminative abstraction to tender lyricism to joyous swing without losing the intense focus of three old hands, masters of their respective instruments, who have the courage and the humility to let the music decide where it wants to go. thrown in for good measure – veers from ruminative abstraction to tender lyricism to joyous swing without losing the intense focus of three old hands, masters of their respective instruments, who have the courage and the humility to let the music decide where it wants to go.
Cormac Larkin, Irish Times