Kaufman/Gertz/Bergonzi: Dreaming Out Loud

These guys make it sound so effortless to make ageless sounds in the trio format. With tenor sax man Jerry Bergonzi out front, the atmosphere is a mix of late '50s/early '60s sensibilities and new millennium themes. Indeed, after a dozen and a half spins of the disc, Charlie Parker keeps coming to mind—Bergonzi is very at home in the upper register of the tenor—suggesting the Yardbird's potential flight path had he not died young. There is a bird-like (Yardbird-ish) quality to Bergonzi's sound; and it's not so much his tone, but his melodic approach. His lines seem encoded in a collective neurochemistry, odd and familiar at the same time, a natural flow, without a great deal of concern for artifical resolutions. The melody just is; it unfolds of its own accord and finds its own path.

Similar in concept to Joe Lovano's first Trio Facination CD with Elvin Jones and Dave Holland, Dreaming Out Loud is perhaps the superior outing of the two. Drummer Bob Kaufman, bassist Bruce Gertz, and tenor saxophonist Jerry Bergonzi have played together for decades, and that comes through with their seamless collective sound. Throughout, Kaufman and Gertz set up churning rhythms of depth and complexity that Bergonzi bobs and weave through, for a sound that is simultaneously as free as Ornette Coleman and as accessible as Charlie Parker's Dial or Savoy stuff.