When jazz was very young (about 90 years ago), and primarily a collective art, most of its practitioners would have thought taking a solo was just plain showing off. American bassist Buster Williams' trio, which has been on a short UK tour, is a triumvirate of the kind of solo stars who emerged in the incarnations of jazz that followed. Williams is one of the great acoustic bassists, and pianist Geri Allen and drummer Lenny White have awesome track records. Yet the group turns out to be as eagerly conversational as the earliest of jazz bands.
No single element holds the key, but the relationship between Geri Allen and Lenny White plays a big part. Performing a good deal of the music from Williams's new CD, Houdini, it quickly emerged that the Geri Allen who came to the UK as a leader in the summer - a complex, refined player - had turned into an ecstatic, chord-pumping hedonist. Allen's looseness and enthusiasm gave the show much of its insistent urgency, especially in dialogue with Lenny White's drumming - a dense and full-on style in which every beat, however brief, is given a startling vividness. All this was cajoled and umpired by Williams's elegant basslines.
Houdini itself was an agile postbop theme opened by Williams high on the finger board, and with his characteristic mix of a springy. dancing tone, sure-footed speed and dark, humming low notes. He is sometimes reminiscent of the MJQ's Percy Heath in his prime, but also has Dave Holland's mixture of emphatic and impulsive phrasing. The theme quickly turned into a restless collective improvisation of chiming piano riffs against Lenny White's clamorous drumming, ascending church-bell keyboard chords resolving in fragile trills swiftly echoed by the bass with bursts of jazz-groove walking.
Buster Williams's remarkable fast pizzicato technique and Allen's rich arpeggios illuminated the ballads in the repertoire. But having discovered such an intuitive creativity through stressing the structure to its breaking-point, the high-energy episodes of the show were the most striking, with Williams's flying runs, Allen's prodding, baiting chordwork and White's hissing cymbal responses and snare-pattern showers. Another world-class acoustic piano trio in a scene already spoiled for choice.
