Matt Renzi: The Cave

Not so with this group led by saxophonist/clarinetist Matt Renzi, a San Francisco native who has spent the past few years living in a variety of locations—Japan, New York, India, and Italy. His trio with bassist David Ambrosio and drummer Russell Meissner did a couple of tours before recording The Cave, developing a vocabulary that capitalizes on the potential harmonic freedom of the chordless trio, as well as its inherent spaciousness. Renzi's rich sense of melody and Ambrosio's ability to provide harmony and/or counterpoint to Renzi, as well as serve as rhythmic anchor with Meissner, act as constant reminders that understated suggestion can often be more powerful than overt declaration.

Renzi's trio takes as precedent Dave Holland's classic Conference of the Birds (ECM, 1973)—with Holland's pastoral title track feeling like a not-so-distant cousin to Renzi's "Poison Ivy, which opens The Cave. But Renzi has a gentler touch, with none of the harsher qualities that woodwind multi-instrumentalists Anthony Braxton or Sam Rivers demonstrated on Holland's session. Similarly, while Ambrosio possesses an unerring sense of groove that's similar to Holland's, this trio date demands that he assume a more dominant harmonic role much of the time. And while this trio's idea of freedom never reaches the kind of jagged extremes found on Conference of the Birds, it comes from a similar space, where strong compositions acts as jumping-off points for deeper exploration.

Renzi's writing is consistently thematic, but the chemistry he shares with Ambrosio and Meissner is what allows the material to be rooted in form yet so open to free play. Miessner is as comfortable in a textural role on the rubato "The Rice Shed as he is a more straightforward rhythmic one on the delicately insistent "In Circles. Ambrosio may show considerable contrapuntal intuition on the three-part closer, "Three Stories, but he balances that with a more definitive groove on both the up-tempo "Faces and Places and the hypnotic, Indian-inflected "To the Cave, which feels like a calmer version of John Zorn's Masada Quartet.

Despite a free and responsive style that finds serendipitous connections with Ambrosio and Meissner, Renzi's openmindedness is rooted in a lyrical approach. Almost despite his command of extended techniques—tonguing the reed to create pointed percussive sounds and making restrained use of multiphonics—he remains a highly approachable player who favours smooth surfaces over hard edges. His approach is surprisingly vocal—or perhaps not, considering that he's studied South Indian vocal music with R.A. Ramamani.

The Cave proves it's possible to be free without being abstruse, open to any possibility while remaining focused. A fine disc from a group which also puts to rest any suggestions that saxophone trios are inherently "missing something.