ECHOS
(Sunnyside)
9/10
The mystery continues. It’s a thread of music in which each note is laden with subtext, so every listening reveals something new: a quality inherent in the work of the likes of Miles Davis, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Now US pianist Dahveed Behroozi espouses comparable mysteries of his own. The nine pieces are based on sketches that he did not show to bassist Thomas Morgan or drummer Billy Mintz before the session: they responded in the moment, and this is part of the magic (as it was on Kind of Blue all those years ago).
Behroozi’s sketches are subjects for three-way conversations in which the piano is no more dominant than the other instruments. The players remind me of three wide-eyed children following a winding path into a forest, and excitedly losing themselves amid the eerie sounds and dappled light. Kinships with the explorations of Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, Mike Nock and Masabumi Kikuchi might be heard, but Behroozi is in no one’s thrall, and deploys a unique interactive language with Morgan and Mintz. The former hews columns of sound that are as colossal as red gums, but sway like saplings in the light breezes and sudden gusts of Mintz’s phenomenal creativity. Astounding.