MUSIC

St George’s, Bristol (Thur 6 October) According to Wikipedia, Phronesis is “the capability to consider the mode of action in order to deliver change” – an Aristotelian concept that’s appropriate to the piano trio’s decision to use the natural acoustics of the hall with just a small bass amp. It’s a decision that prompts scepticism from some around me, fearing that wildfire drummer Anton Eger will be hampered in deference to Ivo Neame’s acoustic piano. Another potential dampener is apparent when we learn that Neame and bassman Jasper Hoiby were up late celebrating their win (as half of The Kairos Quartet) at last night’s MOBO awards. And things do, indeed, start with restraint. The first number has crisp stabbing bass and shushing drums under a simple piano arpeggio sequence that’s very Scandinavian but not so very Phronesis. It’s disarming and, of course, deceptive – soon dropped for an exhortative bass solo in Hoiby’s inimitable style while Neame feels around the keyboard as if he’s lost the tune somewhere in the Steinway, and Eger snap-raps his kit to get their attention. It’s a bracing three-part counterpoint that works from its own internal logic, firing into a timeshift of mood before neatly ending. It’s new material, too, and we learn that most of the gig is work in progress for the next album. Whether it’s a conscious thing they have planned or just an adroit response to this acoustic setting, I like the music very much: past performances had impressed me but the relentlessness of their full-tilt sets had begun to pall. This new stuff has a wider dynamic range and spaces, even! They start the second half with a fractured tango, Eger’s facial gymnastics and bodily contortions seeming to reflect the restraint he’s asserting, Neame’s piano alternating between drifting harmonics and bursts of snapping sound, like Bill Evans jolting awake. Hoiby steers through the bass and the piece dissolves to reform over and over again. These are amazing players of the kind so connected to their instrument that you feel there’s no barrier to their playing: whatever they want to play they can instantly play. The new material gives more clarity to both the individual contributions and the architecture of the trio and I leave looking forward to that album immensely. (Tony Benjamin)

Copyright Tony Benjamin 2011