Dan Weiss Trio: Dedication

Approaching any Dan Weiss album requires a willingness to be challenged. From head-scratching time signatures to fascinating shifts in mood and texture, Weiss gives intrepid listeners a number of pathways into his music, and his releases always justify repeated encounters. Dedication, his latest with his regular trio partners pianist Jacob Sacks and bassist Thomas Morgan, is no exception, although what is most remarkable about this album is Weiss' lyrical sensitivity, a quality which is sometimes overshadowed on his other recordings by his percussive pyrotechnics.

The album's nine dedicatees run quite a gamut of influences. Unsurprisingly, Elvin Jones gets a tune, but so too do filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, and Burt Bacharach. And there is a corresponding logic to each, allowing the trio to cover a lot of stylistic territory while still sounding cohesive—undoubtedly the product of the musicians' long-standing history going back to their debut record in 2006, Now Yes When (Tone of a Pitch Music). "For Tim Smith" gets the proceedings off to an animated start, fueled by a rock-tinged rhythm which does justice to the late Cardiacs' frontman, but with enough shifts in tempo and meter to bear the earmarks of a Weiss composition. Other pieces are even more technically impressive. "For Nancarrow" (dedicated to composer Conlon Nancarrow) is a veritable rhythmic puzzle, with a relentless barrage of divergent time signatures and astonishingly difficult drum patterns, and "For Elvin" displays the polyrhythmic facility of its namesake convincingly.

Yet despite the abundant opportunities for the leader to display his chops, this is most certainly a trio record, as Morgan and Sacks are given plenty of space to exhibit the tuneful dimension of Weiss' compositions. "For Vivienne" is a beautiful ballad dedicated to Weiss' daughter, and Morgan gets a solo turn which is perfect in its spare reserve, with Sacks showing similar restraint to let the melody emerge fully. "For George Floyd" finds the right balance between anger and resilience, anchored by another strong tune from Weiss and suitably nuanced contributions from Morgan and Sacks, while "For Bacharach" might be as close to a "pop" theme as Weiss will get—but it works well here, with a loving tribute that is given additional heft by Sacks' muscular chords and some nimble interjections from Morgan. The album's closer, "For Grandma May," is perhaps the album's most touching piece, with striking emotional vulnerability and graceful tranquility.

As talented as Weiss may be as a percussionist, his refusal to let his virtuosity get in the way of the beauty of the music is noteworthy, and Dedication is another excellent entry in his estimable catalog.