Arild Andersen/Paolo Vinaccia/Tommy Smith
In-House Science
ECM
NORWEGIAN double bass master Arild Andersen’s trio with Oslo-based Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia and Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith has been widely acclaimed as one of the best small groups working in jazz today, and this live recording, captured in Bad Ischl, Austria, demonstrates why.
The group tours often and over its ten years together it has developed the kind of understanding that allows free movement between musical styles – from the gospel-like Blussy to the folky Venice to the knotty In House with its tightly articulated collective phrases – while always retaining a strong, immediately recognisable identity.
Quality of sound is important, be it on Andersen’s gorgeous melodic-cum-chordal intro on the opening Mira or North of the North Wind’s haunting electronic atmosphere, but the most striking features here, as on their last Scottish visit, are the contrasts they create and their exhilarating collective energy.
Smith slips between plaintive, soulful vulnerability and raw, angular feistiness. Andersen caresses the strings one moment and takes enthusiastically muscular flight the next and all the while the marvellously resourceful Vinaccia provides the delicacy, elasticity rock solid drive and exacting punctuation as required to give these changing moods fabulous potency.
Rob Adams
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