David Haney Trio: Blue Flint Girl

Pianist David Haney pulls together a trio with two bassists—Michael Bisio and Adam Lane—on Blue Flint Girl. Not only does this unusual instrumentation peak curiosity, but it also leads to an uncommon sound. The beauty of recording for CIMP is that the music grows like a flower. The seeds are planted before the music starts and then it just goes. The water pours from the imaginations of the musicians. In the liner notes, Haney describes Blue Flint Girl as the second of two sessions recorded in the summer of 2006 with this group. His improvisational ideas for both albums center on the blues. The first recording resulted in Blues Royale (CIMP 354).

Blue Flint Girl begins with Bisio laying out a pizzicato line that springs, reverberates and leads into Lane's arco stroke, which poses a set of tones running in opposite directions, directions that are tweaked, dissonant, continuous and a bit melodic. When Haney sneaks in on the piano with bass end chords that progress to mid-register, it is as if Haney's intention is to catch up with the basses in the strands of tonality that have been drawn already. This is the initiation to music where momentum is crucial to how the instruments move in and out of each other's spectrum, intersect and then swing out again, especially audible in "Valse Moderne," where Bisio undoes the percussiveness of his string bass.

A true convergence comes in "Coyote Learns To Whistle," where the trio operates as a rhythmic unit, seemingly having reached the same train of thought. This is not to say that the music generally does not flow; it does, in generously abstract configurations, with the basses exchanging places around the center where the piano resides. However, in "Jeanaye," Haney proceeds on his own in the company of a the bass whose strokes darkly color the surface. "A Good Friend" shows the delightful curvature of Haney's blues solo signature.

By the end of the record, the band members are recalling the spaces through which they have traveled. Their collective action merges effusively once again, with the two basses magnifying the power of a walking pizzicato line as pianist Haney digs out another foot-tapping tune in "Jupiter With Tip Toes."