Peter Madsen's CIA Trio: 88 Butterfly

Veteran pianist & composer Peter Madsen, despite having accompanied or mentored such leading lights and legends as Chris Potter, Maria Schneider, Ravi Coltrane, Stan Getz, Roy Hargrove and Benny Golson, seems to prefer a career flying under the proverbial radar. But there is always something to write home about when his new music comes down the pike. 88 Butterfly, his second full outing with his CIA trio of double bassist Herwig Hammerl and drummer Martin Grabher is no exception.

Powered and inspired by the youthful memory of joy which accompanied a full blown sighting of Monarch butterflies, and fully acknowledging that musicians and audience alike are in desperate need of a break from virus and bombs, Madsen, Hammerl, and Grabher approach Madsen's twelve easeful originals (each named after a species of butterfly) with a wilful dance and delicacy.

The trio (just one of twelve different ensembles formed from the pianist's Austria-based Collective for Improvising Artists, thus CIA) hold their more improvisatory traits in check throughout 88 Butterfly and the music, like any field free Blue Morpho, Apollo, or Monarch, gavottes and pirouettes, floats and sails. All of Madsen's compositional hallmarks—fanciful invention, muscular, supple melodies, amble expressive space for his cohorts, spirited interplay, and a crafted determination to present his best each time out—are on full display. 88 Butterfly summons that essence within to recapture, if only momentarily, if only for the album's hour running time, that notion of sunlit flight despite the darkness that pervades.