Jarrett/Peacock/DeJohnette: Always Let Me Go

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * *)

Pianist Jarrett was a titan of the jazz piano back in the '70s (all those multiple disc sets, live albums, classical works and so on) and his free-form improvisations were muscular and thoughtful, a real sense of music being wrestled out of a profound intellect.

Perhaps he recorded and performed too much because there was a dilution by the late-80s. His return to form in the '90s, often through reconsideration of standards, has been one of the greatest career recoveries in jazz and his '99 solo album of standards The Melody at Night, With You should be in any serious collection.

This live double disc with longtime collaborators Gary Peacock (bass) and drummer Jack DeJohnette finds the trio working from small themes or fragments of melodic ideas and improvising them into works of either great delicacy (the three-minute The River) or vigorous gymnastics (the 14-minute Tsunami, sort of Bach-meets-Monk). And sometimes both: the 16-minute Tributaries opens with pointillistic playing by Jarrett before DeJohnette and Peacock create a rhythmic pulse and the trio embark on a funky, soulful flight around the midpoint.

One of the most consistently rewarding jazz groups of the past decade here prove again their depth and breadth of vision as they work the idiom right to its parameters.

Label: ECM/Global Routes