Tiny Reviews: Rino Abore Quartet, Simcock/Garland/Sirkis, Tomer Bar Trio, Trio Sued, & Benjamin Faugloire Project

Tiny Reviews, featuring:  Rino Arbore Quartet Suggestions From Space, Simcock, Garland & Sirkis Lighthouse, Tomer Bar Trio Local Groove, Trio Sued Space, and Benjamin Faugloire Project Diving.

*****

Rino Arbore Quartet – Suggestions From Space

Fascinating quartet that evokes images of early-period Bill Frisell and later-period ECM chamber jazz.  Quite beautiful when it drifts on a melody, engaging when it gets more of a mind to deconstruct.  Guitar adds a sense of mystery, trumpet a weightlessness of being.  Drums work best when a soft hush.  Arco action by the bass substantially elevates the quality of the music, though, admittedly, I’m an easy sucker for anytime the bassist gets the bow out.  While those tunes which tackle dissonance and cut weird angles add needed diversity to the album’s overall sound, it’s the quiet late-night tunes that are the album’s points of strength.  Good stuff, and the kind of album that might’ve (undeservedly) slipped under the radar.

Your album personnel:  Rino Arbore (guitar), Roy Nikolaisen (trumpet & flugelhorn), Giorgio Vendola (double bass), and Gianlivio Liberti (drums).

(Note: slight pause of silence before and after embedded audio.)

Released on the No Flight Records label.  Jazz from the Bari, Italy scene.

Available at eMusic.

Simcock, Garland & Sirkis – Lighthouse

The Lighthouse Trio reunite for a set of lyricism and bounce.  Performing of a balancing act between jazz complexity and pop simplicity, the trio creates an album that is very listenable while remaining quite at home on the ACT Music label, which typically doesn’t release music that puts one foot in front of the other.

Your album personnel:  Gwilym Simcock (piano), Tim Garland (reeds), and Asaf Sirkis (drums & percussion).

Available at eMusic.

Tomer Bar Trio – Local Groove

Nice straight-forward piano trio album.  Light on its feet, with a pleasant bounce.  Pianist Tomer Bar has a light touch on keys, matched well against some animated drumming.  Some tracks come of as a bit scattered, though that’s not always a bad thing when it transitions to a subsequent, softer tune.  Some vocals, which have a pleasant ease to them.

Your album personnel:  Tomer Bar (piano), Uri Kutner (bass), and Ofri Nehemya (drums).

Released on the Spectra Jazz Records label.  Jazz from the Tel Aviv, Israel scene.

Available at eMusic.

Trio Sued – Space

Intriguing album.  Flurries of notes, interspersing moments of silence infrequently, but in just the right spots.  For everything going on here, this still comes off as an introspective recording.  It’s like a fairy tale about a lonely math equation.

Your album personnel:  Heinrich Werkl (bass), Primus Sitter (guitar), and Michael Erian (sax).

Stream an album track at Werkl’s artist site.

Released on the Extraplatte label.  Jazz from the Wein, Austria scene.

Available at eMusic.

Benjamin Faugloire Project – Diving

Moody piano trio that gets pretty evocative when it broods.  Two feet full in the modern piano trio school.  Nice follow-up to their 2008 release Premiere Nouvelle, which I still listen to from time to time.  One of those artists who doesn’t get named in the same breath as an E.S.T. or Jacob Karlzon (and that may be appropriate), but Faugloire’s outfit should definitely be part of the discussion when talking about the better modern piano trio jazz recordings.

Your album personnel:  Benjamin Faugloire (piano), Jerome Mouriez (drums), and Denis Frangulian (bass).

Released on the 3/6 Productions label.  Jazz from the Paris, France scene.

Available at eMusic.

*****

Portions of these reviews were originally used in my Jazz Picks weekly article for eMusic, so here’s some language protecting their rights to that reprinted material as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks,“ reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.  Cheers.