Roberto Magris: Duo & Trio

Italian-born pianist Roberto Magris is a musician to whom the phrase "he could play the phone book and make it sound interesting" definitely applies—as it does to the late great Chicago-based saxophone maestro Mark Colby who met Magris in 2016, formed an instant bond and recorded one-half of this superlative album three years later, one year before Colby's untimely death from cancer.

Magris and Colby recorded seven tracks in a Chicago studio and planned to record more—enough to fill an album—the next time Magris was in the Windy City, a plan that was derailed by Colby's sudden illness. Wanting to release the tracks but realizing they weren't enough to fill an entire album, JMood Records' Paul Collins reached back to a 2012 trio session that also produced too little material for an entire album and blended it with the duo tracks to raise the playing time to more than an hour. Colby performs on the odd-numbered tracks, the trio on the even-numbered.

And lest it may be thought that the trio tracks were merely added as "filler," nothing could be further from the mark, as the threesome (Magris, bassist Elisa Pruett, drummer Brian Steever and—on two numbers—conguero Pablo Sanhueza ) is splendid on its own terms, and especially on a mellow, and all but unrecognizable, version of Ray Noble's normally lightning-quick "Cherokee." Colby plays his StanGetz-inspired tenor on five numbers, soprano on Magris' "In the Springtime of My Soul." He shines on a pair of lovely standards, "Old Folks" and "Some Other Time," and on three other Magris originals: "Cool World!," "Papa's Got a Brand New Rag" and "Blues for Herbie 'G'" (as in "Geller"), which closes the session.

The trio's five numbers were written by Noble; Elmo Hope ("Bellarosa"); Sonny Clark ("Melody for 'C'"); Andrew Hill ("Samba Rasta") and Kurt Weill (the sunny "Rhyme for Angela," one of the album's many highlights). If Magris is the glue that holds the sessions together, their component parts are solid as a mahogany dining table. Colby is impressive, as always, but barely more so than the members of Magris' talented trio, whose accomplishments are at last on record, better late than never. The result is a forceful one-two punch, initiated by Magris and Colby and completed by his sure-handed trio.

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